journalctl – How to Display Colors in Output

journalctlsystemd

The output of journalctl really looks messy without colors. Is it possible to add colors to its output? On my system it seems only important lines are highlighted. Even dmesg can output with color by adding the --color switch!

Best Answer

The color support of journalctl is documented in man journalctl:

When outputting to a tty, lines are colored according to priority: lines of level ERROR and higher are colored red; lines of level NOTICE and higher are highlighted; other lines are displayed normally.

That's from systemd 229. As seen in the man page, There are no other built-in color controls for journalctl.