I’ve found that anytime I spin up an Ubuntu system, whether in Digital Ocean, Google Cloud, or even through Windows Subsystem for Linux, color doesn’t seem to be working properly.

To fix this, there is a handy workaround that is very simple to implement.

First, let’s create a bash alias so that launching Tmux will actually launch with color settings configured. Start by editing the following file.

vi ~/.bash_aliases

Then add the following line.

alias tmux="TERM=xterm-256color tmux"

Now we will modify our Tmux configuration file as well.

vi ~/.tmux.conf

And add the following line.

set -g default-terminal "screen-256color"

Then we will restart Tmux.

tmux kill-server && tmux

Or you could just run these commands.

sudo echo "alias tmux=\"TERM=xterm-256color tmux\"" >> ~/.bash_aliases
sudo echo "set -g default-terminal \"screen-256color\"" >> ~/.tmux.conf
tmux kill-server && tmux

That’s it! Launch Tmux and you should now have color.