unixterminalx11gnome-terminal

How to determine a terminal's background color?

I'd like to know if there is any way to determine a terminal's background color ?

In my case, using gnome-terminal.
It might matter, since it's entirety up to the terminal application to draw the background of its windows, which may even be something else than a plain color.

Solution

  • I've came up with the following:

    #!/bin/sh
#
# Query a property from the terminal, e.g. background color.
#
# XTerm Operating System Commands
#     "ESC ] Ps;Pt ST"

oldstty=$(stty -g)

# What to query?
# 11: text background
Ps=${1:-11}

stty raw -echo min 0 time 0
# stty raw -echo min 0 time 1
printf "\033]$Ps;?\033\\"
# xterm needs the sleep (or "time 1", but that is 1/10th second).
sleep 0.00000001
read -r answer
# echo $answer | cat -A
result=${answer#*;}
stty $oldstty
# Remove escape at the end.
echo $result | sed 's/[^rgb:0-9a-f/]\+$//'

    Source/Repo/Gist: https://gist.github.com/blueyed/c8470c2aad3381c33ea3