Features›SGR (Text Styling)›Standard bg colors (SGR 40-47)

Standard bg colors (SGR 40-47)

Category: sgr · Baseline: core · Tags: ECMA-48 Standard · Specification ↗

ESC [ 40–47 m

SGR 40-47 set the background color to one of 8 standard colors: black (40), red (41), green (42), yellow (43), blue (44), magenta (45), cyan (46), white (47). Universally supported. As with foreground colors, the actual RGB values depend on the terminal's configured color scheme.

How this is testedautomated
Send \x1b[42mX (green bg), verify the cell's background color has a green channel > 100.

The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.

Analysis2026-04-06

Supported by 11 of 12 terminals (92%). Not supported by: vt100.js. Part of the Core TUI baseline. Notes: vt100.js: Standard background colors (SGR 40–47) not implemented in vt100.js baseline emulator.

Supported by 12 of 14 backends (86%)

Terminal Applications

Terminal	Version	Support	Notes
iTerm2	3.6.9	✓ yes
Ghostty	1.3.1	✓ yes
VS Code		✓ yes
Warp		✓ yes
Cursor		✓ yes
Terminal.app		✓ yes

Headless Backends

Parser correctness only — a ✓ means the parser accepts the sequence.

Backend	Version	Support	Notes
Alacritty	0.26.0	✓ yes
Kitty	0.40.0	✓ yes
vterm	0.2.0	✓ yes
xterm.js	5.5.0	✓ yes
WezTerm	0.1.0-fork.5	~ partial	Backend returns palette index instead of resolved RGB
vt100.js	0.2.1	✗ no	Standard background colors (SGR 40–47) not implemented in vt100.js baseline emulator

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