github.com/kubecolor/kubecolor

What's Changed

Features

• Colorize kubectl label & kubectl annotate by @applejag in #300

  Before	After

• Colorize True/False bool status in kubectl get table output by @tenitski in #307

  Before	After

• Improve 'executable not found' error by @applejag in #299

  Makes the error easier to understand.

  Before:

  $ kubecolor get pods
  [kubecolor] [ERROR] exec: "kubectl": executable file not found in $PATH

  After:

  $ kubecolor get pods
  [kubecolor] [ERROR] exec: "kubectl": executable file not found in $PATH; kubectl must be installed to use kubecolor

Fixes

• Increase max line length from 65 kB to 1.5 MB by @applejag in #297

  Before this fix, kubecolor would freeze when it tried to parse a line that was too long. But with this buffer size increase you should now be able to use kubecolor without it freezing.

  In short, this fixes:

  • Running kubecolor get secret -o yaml on a secret with a really big value, such as Helm release secrets
  • Running kubecolor logs on a pod that had a really big log line

  In addition, if kubecolor tries to read a line that's still too long (more than 1.5 MB now), it will now error out instead of freezing.

  The size limit was chosen based on the maximum Secret and ConfigMap value size, rounded up a bit to account for the size increase of base64 encoding and any other formatting like indentation and key names.

• Always use the custom version printer by @applejag in #298

  Before	After

  This did not work before becase kubecolor runs kubectl behind the scenes, reads its output, parses it, and adds in the coloring. And with the kubectl version subcommand it also injects kubecolor's own version into the output.

  But when kubecolor's output is not a terminal, such as when piping it through cat, then as an optimization kubecolor just handed its stdout over to kubectl, so kubecolor has no way of seeing or modifying the output.

  The fix was to still wrap kubectl's output when being piped, if (and only if) the subcommand used is kubectl version.

  You could always also get the kubecolor version using kubecolor --kubecolor-version. But now it behaves more predictable when piping.

Other

• Add cooldown to Dependabot updates by @applejag in #296

Dependencies

• Update to Go 1.26.1 by @applejag in #308
• Bump actions/checkout from 6.0.0 to 6.0.1 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #287
• Bump actions/checkout from 6.0.1 to 6.0.2 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #293
• Bump actions/download-artifact from 7.0.0 to 8.0.0 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #306
• Bump actions/download-artifact from 8.0.0 to 8.0.1 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #314
• Bump codecov/codecov-action from 5.5.2 to 6.0.0 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #316
• Bump docker/build-push-action from 6.18.0 to 6.19.2 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #302
• Bump docker/setup-qemu-action from 3.6.0 to 3.7.0 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #284
• Bump goreleaser/goreleaser-action from 6.4.0 to 7.0.0 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #303
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.34.1 to 0.34.2 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #285
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.34.2 to 0.34.3 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #288
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.34.3 to 0.35.0 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #290
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.35.0 to 0.35.1 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #301
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.35.1 to 0.35.2 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #305
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.35.2 to 0.35.3 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #313
• Bump the all group with 2 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #291
• Bump the all group with 2 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #292
• Bump the all group with 2 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #294
• Bump the all group with 2 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #315
• Bump the all group with 3 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #286
• Bump the all group with 3 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #289
• Bump the all group with 3 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #311
• Bump the all group with 5 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #312
• Bump zizmorcore/zizmor-action from 0.4.1 to 0.5.0 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #295

New Contributors

• @tenitski made their first contribution in #307

Full Changelog: v0.5.3...v0.6.0

What's Changed

Vulnerabilities

1. GO-2025-4010 / CVE-2025-47912
2. GO-2025-4011 / CVE-2025-58185

Both are minor vulnerabilities in the Go standard library regarding network. Kubecolor does not use the network at all.

Features

• add more missing error status colorizing by @larsgerber in #274

  • PreCreateHookError
  • PreStartHookError
  • PostStartHookError
  • CreateContainerConfigError
  • CreateContainerError

Dependencies

• Switch from bitnami/kubectl to registry.k8s.io/kubectl by @applejag in #276
• Bump docker/login-action from 3.5.0 to 3.6.0 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #277
• Bump the all group with 2 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #281
• Go 1.25.3 to resolve CVE-2025-58185 & CVE-2025-47912 by @applejag in #283

Other

• Fix CI/CD security to follow zizmor recommendations by @applejag in #273

Full Changelog: v0.5.2...v0.5.3

What's Changed

Vulnerabilities

• GO-2025-3787 / GHSA-fv92-fjc5-jj9h
• GO-2025-3750 / CVE-2025-0913
• GO-2025-3956 / CVE-2025-47906

Fixes

• Fix kubectl logs parsing of klog caller with dashes by @applejag in #252
• Fix kubectl logs parsing of dates with comma delimiter by @applejag in #253
• Add missing error status colorizing by @noetarbouriech in #259

Dependencies

• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.32.3 to 0.33.0 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #245
• Bump actions/attest-build-provenance from 2.2.3 to 2.3.0 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #246
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.33.0 to 0.33.1 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #250
• Bump actions/attest-build-provenance from 2.3.0 to 2.4.0 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #256
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.33.1 to 0.33.2 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #257
• Update Go v1.24.0 -> v1.24.5 & mapstructure v2.2.1 -> v2.4.0 to fix vulnerability by @applejag in #262
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.33.2 to 0.33.3 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #261
• Bump actions/download-artifact from 4 to 5 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #263
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.33.3 to 0.33.4 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #264
• Bump actions/checkout from 4 to 5 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #265
• Bump actions/attest-build-provenance from 2.4.0 to 3.0.0 in the all group by @dependabot[bot] in #266
• Bump the all group with 2 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #267
• Bump the all group with 2 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #268
• Bump the all group with 2 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #269
• Update Go to 1.24.7 to fix vuln GO-2025-3956 / CVE-2025-47906 by @applejag in #271

Other

• Fix release workflow by @applejag in #238
• Fix tagging by @applejag in #239
• Fix artifacts in release.yml by @applejag in #240
• Fix upload assets to release by @applejag in #241
• Fix publish command by @applejag in #242
• Add missing release asset checksums by @applejag in #244
• Fix CI badge in README.md by @applejag in #251
• Fix release workflow after actions/download-artifacts update by @applejag in #272

New Contributors

• @noetarbouriech made their first contribution in #259

Full Changelog: v0.5.1...v0.5.2

What's Changed

We now serve DEB & RPM repositories! See https://kubecolor.github.io/setup/install/#deb for more info.

This release only contains dependency updates and changes to our releases.

New features

• DEB & RPM packaging by @applejag in #229
• Added build attestations by @applejag in #230

Dependencies

• Bump the all group with 2 updates by @dependabot in #212
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.32.1 to 0.32.2 in the all group by @dependabot in #214
• Update to Go 1.23.6 by @applejag in #215
• Bump github.com/google/go-cmp from 0.6.0 to 0.7.0 in the all group by @dependabot in #217
• Bump the all group with 2 updates by @dependabot in #218
• Bump github.com/spf13/viper from 1.20.0 to 1.20.1 in the all group by @dependabot in #223
• Update Go to 1.24.2 by @applejag in #227

Non-functional changes

• Move test-cluster to test/cluster by @applejag in #222
• Use draft releases when releasing new versions by @applejag in #228
• Merge CI workflows into the same workflow file by @applejag in #231
• Change generated config docs by @applejag in #233
• Add CODEOWNERS by @applejag in #232
• Added labeler by @applejag in #237

Full Changelog: v0.5.0...v0.5.1

What's Changed

Smaller release than v0.4.0, but still contains some nice bugfixes and a few but useful features.

New features

• Colorize kubectl diff by @Marcel2603 in #196
• Colorize kubectl apply --server-side by @applejag in #210

Bug fixes

• Fixed negative tz offsets in time regex by @guppy0130 in #174
• Fixed 'kubectl version -o yaml' indentation by @applejag in #182
• Fixed --output=name using table coloring by @applejag in #181
• Fixed missing output from YAML & JSON printers, and YAML multiline support by @applejag in #180
• Fixed 'DEBU' not being read as debug log level by @applejag in #185
• Fixed completion of flag values (with equal sign, as in: --namespace=...) by @applejag in #208

Dependencies

• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.31.0 to 0.31.1 in the all group by @dependabot in #183
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.31.1 to 0.31.2 in the all group by @dependabot in #189
• Bump codecov/codecov-action from 4 to 5 in the all group by @dependabot in #193
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.31.2 to 0.31.3 in the all group by @dependabot in #197
• Update Go to 1.23.4 by @applejag in #206
• Bump k8s.io/apimachinery from 0.31.3 to 0.32.0 in the all group by @dependabot in #205
• Bump github.com/invopop/jsonschema from 0.12.0 to 0.13.0 in the all group by @dependabot in #211

Non-functional changes

• Fixed govulncheck workflow by @applejag in #176
• Fix internal/cmd/configdoc after color refactor by @applejag in #200
• Improved debug log printing for multiline strings & slices by @applejag in #209

New Contributors

• @guppy0130 made their first contribution in #174
• @Marcel2603 made their first contribution in #196

Full Changelog: v0.4.0...v0.5.0

What's Changed

Big new release! Back in v0.3.0 we introduced themes. This time around, we have some more new features and a lot of added colorization of a of kubectl subcommands.

A huge thanks to everyone involved! ❤️

New features

• Paging: Pipe output through pager by @lennartack in #122, #144

  Controlled by the new flags:

  • --paging=auto (also KUBECOLOR_PAGING environment variable) enables paging on subcommands that supports it (e.g kubectl get pods, while paging is always disabled for kubectl get pods --watch)
  • --no-paging is an alias for --paging=never, useful for overriding value from config or environment variable
  • --pager="less -RF" (also PAGER or KUBECOLOR_PAGER environment variables) sets pager command

• Inject kubecolor flags into shell completions by @applejag in #132

  Means when you have bash, zsh, fish, or PowerShell completions set up and press Tab to complete your flags, then kubecolor's additional flags will now also show up:

  $ kubecolor --kubeco<TAB><TAB>
  --kubecolor-stdin    -- Read command input from stdin or file instea
  --kubecolor-theme    -- Set kubecolor theme preset, e.g dark or ligh
  --kubecolor-version  -- Print the kubecolor version and then exit.
  --kubeconfig         -- Path to the kubeconfig file to use for CLI r

• Added colorization:

  • Colorize kubecolor --help help text by @applejag in #129

    Before	After

  • Colorize kubecolor logs (instead of just single-colored) by @applejag in #157, #168

    Exciting feature that should make log tailing much easier.

    Before	After

    Compared to all other parsing techniques we use in kubecolor, this feature contains the most heuristic based approach. What we're trying to accomplish is parsing and colorizing any possible log formats. If you have some log formats that are weirdly colorized, then please report them as bug reports and we'll have a closer look into them.

    It's able to quite well handle JSON logs, logfmt formatted logs, and klog logs (commonly used in operators). However it's not great at dealing with multiline logs like some of Elasticsearch's logs, and sometimes the colors can become quite overwhelming on long log messages.

  • Colorize "verb based output" by @applejag in #154, #162, #161

    Generalized the kubectl apply logic so we could use it on a lot of subcommands with a similar output where the general output structure is: "resource-name" + "verb"

    This includes subcommands:

    • kubectl create
    • kubectl delete
    • kubectl drain
    • kubectl expose
    • kubectl patch
    • kubectl rollout pause
    • kubectl rollout restart
    • kubectl rollout resume
    • kubectl rollout undo
    • kubectl scale
    • kubectl uncordon

• Inject kubecolor version into 'kubectl version' by @applejag in #133

  We have had the --kubecolor-version flag for a while. But you will now also see kubecolor's version in the regular kubectl version output.

  $ kubecolor version --client
  Client Version: v1.31.0
  Kustomize Version: v5.4.2
  Kubecolor Version: v0.4.0
  
  $ kubecolor version --client --output yaml
  clientVersion:
      buildDate: "1980-01-01T00:00:00Z"
      compiler: gc
      gitCommit: 9edcffcde5595e8a5b1a35f88c421764e575afce
      gitTreeState: archive
      gitVersion: v1.31.0
      goVersion: go1.22.6
      major: "1"
      minor: "31"
      platform: linux/amd64
  kubecolorVersion: v0.4.0
  kustomizeVersion: v5.4.2

  This is a rare case where we actually change the output of a command. All other subcommand's outputs solely add colors while intending to keep the text identical.

• Colorize multiple statuses (e.g node Ready,SchedulingDisabled) by @applejag in #158

  Before	After

• Colorize "No resources found" by @applejag in #164

  Before	After

• Colorize stderr logs using "kubectl logs" logic by @applejag in #166

  Sometimes kubectl writes output to stderr, such as when using the --v 6 flag. Previously this used a simple logic of printing it in full red if it started with the word "error", or uncolored otherwise.

  That "uncolored otherwise" has now been replaced with using the same log parsing and coloring as has been introduced for the kubectl logs subcommand.

• Added colored kubecolor debug logs by @applejag in #169

  Kubecolor has had its own logs since its beginning, such as if it fails to find a kubectl executable to run or if an environment variable has an invalid value. But ironically, they have always been uncolored.

  This is now fixed :)

Bug fixes

• BREAKING: Fixed KUBECOLOR_CONFIG targeting directory instead of file by @applejag in #145

  While being a breaking change, this feature never worked as intentional to begin with. Apologies for the issue.

• Fix --force-colors, and adds --force-colors=truecolor override support by @applejag in #127

• Fix kubectl plugins with dashes not being detected as plugins by @larsgerber in #110

• Skip pager integration if no default can be found by @applejag in #126

• Fix linting issue in Dockerfile by @applejag in #159

• Changed PAGER feature to opt-in by @applejag in #130

• Don't exit immediately when pager exits by @lennartack in #139

Docs

• Removed docs in favor of GitHub Pages by @applejag in #150

  Visit https://kubecolor.github.io/setup/install/ to see our new documentation site where information is way easier to navigate than our formerly lengthy repository README.

• Added sample screenshot for KUBECOLOR_OBJ_FRESH by @applejag in #128

Dependencies

• Update to Go 1.22.5 by @applejag in #147
• Bump github.com/spf13/viper from 1.18.2 to 1.19.0 in the all group by @dependabot in #140
• Bump goreleaser/goreleaser-action from 5 to 6 in the all group by @dependabot in #141
• Bump docker/build-push-action from 5 to 6 in the all group by @dependabot in #142

Non-functional changes

• Update PR and issue templates by @applejag in #149
• Update config reference docs generation by @applejag in #160
• Run test corpus via go test by @applejag in #156
• Small refactor PR on printer pkg, and gofumpt by @applejag in #151
• Change to gotestsum in GitHub Actions by @applejag in #135
• Added funding file by @prune998 in #138
• Added workflow for linting Go version in go.mod vs Dockerfile by @applejag in #148

New Contributors

• @lennartack made their first contribution in #122
• @larsgerber made their first contribution in #110

Full Changelog: v0.3.3...v0.4.0

Changelog

• 84a39b2 Fix detection of 'oc rsh' (#123)

Changelog

• fc00697 Added coloring of Init:Error type statuses (#116)
• 7c84588 Change autocomplete documentation for fish (#114)
• 3d2be40 Fixed kubecolor adding colors in completions (#118)
• 7d31f14 Fixed kubecolor coloring oc rsh (#117)
• 9a6fda5 KUBECOLOR_LIGHT_BACKGROUND was working in reverse (#119)
• 53b973e VSCode settings & fixed typos (#115)
• 6d0fdc9 adding automation for HomeBrew update (#120)

Changelog

This version is mostly a re-release of v0.3.0.

We had a bug in the initial release of v0.3.0, and after a quick patch v0.3.0 was deleted and released again.

However re-tagging a release has proven problematic due to the cascade of package maintainers being too fast and too good at keeping their repos up-to-date. So even though the re-tagging of v0.3.0 was done just an hour after its initial release, we still had multiple package registries like Termux using the initial (and buggy) v0.3.0.

Therefore, here is v0.3.1, which is the same code as the newer re-tagged v0.3.0.

We will avoid re-tagging in the future. Thank you all for your patience ❤️

Changelog

• 044d580 Add corpus-based testing (with auto-updating) (#90)
• e49db73 Added YAML config jsonschema (#83)
• d864b4d Added docs on PowerShell completions (#82)
• b8eb64c Added docs on oc usage (#81)
• 1401f48 Added docs on running via Docker (#84)
• 6a569b2 Added flag --kubecolor-stdin to allow piping in output (#101)
• 876edfe Added note on AUR package to README (#53)
• 97ca3e3 Added note on version compatibility (#68)
• 345ca07 Added pre-0.0.21 color preset (#80)
• d4b08f4 Color for value of env from, annotation and label (#55)
• ef7d418 Color status for OOMKilled and <nil> (#52)
• d3f2d2a Colorize kubectl events command (#66)
• 2a39126 Colorize duration & quantity (#92)
• 9b8b036 Custom coloring (#59)
• c2ccc0b Disable CGO in release binaries (#105)
• dd2adb7 Fix GLIBC_2.34 version error in Docker image (#93)
• ccd6341 Fix output from 'apply --dry-run=server' (#58)
• fc3b9ee Fix some coloring issues from the coloring PR (#79)
• 475a125 Generate screenshots using charmbracelet/freeze (#102)
• a564bda Kubecolor is now available on Termux (Android) (#89)
• 6bdf9b8 Kubecolor is now available on homebrew-core (#103)
• 0c0e834 Patch to output kubectl stdout when using plain
• 5e93987 Skip pushing Docker image for each merge (#85)
• 372526d Update Go to 1.22.2 (#95)
• ef77d2e Update defaults in config docs in README (#96)
• 62859f6 Update to Go 1.22 (#56)
• 1324c08 Update to Go 1.22.1 (#78)
• bc07e7b Updated default theme (#91)
• 82cae11 [Feature] Color-blind themes (#86)
• 9497a50 add test coverage report (#62)
• 6a32eed removed debug
• 0805484 update codeconv and add token