Make OS X Terminal respect 256 colors in screen

xterm-256color.md

1. Ensure that Terminal declares itself as "xterm-256color"

Under Terminal > Preferences... > (Profile) > Advanced, "Declare terminal as:" should be set to xterm-256color.

2. Build a version of screen that supports 256 colors

This is easy with homebrew:

brew install screen

When this finishes you'll have a new binary in /usr/local/bin/screen.

3. Add the new screen binary to your path

Add /usr/local/bin to the front of your $PATH so that your shell uses this binary, and not the one in /usr/bin (you can confirm that it's using the correct one with which screen). If you're using the bash, this goes into your .bash_profile:

PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

If you're using another shell, then you probably already know where this goes. :)

@buncis I also had to ensure screen ran an interactive login shell. Put this in my.screenrc:

shell -$SHELL

Also $TERM may still be run as screen. So I put export TERM="xterm-256color" in my .bash_profile, so that when screen (or any login shell) is run, it explicitly sets 256 colors.