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Copilot CLI colors don't respect terminal theme in Warp

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#4,843 2 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
55/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
shell
Domain
cli

Research direction

Start by reproducing the issue in Copilot CLI 1.0.84-6 with macOS appearance set to light and Warp using the Fancy Dracula theme. Compare the behavior with Copilot 1.0.84-5 and the default Mac terminal, then trace the /theme and terminal-color handling. Done means dark Warp themes remain readable regardless of the OS appearance setting.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

triage
Describe the bug

In Warp terminal (Mac), Copilot CLI changes text colors based on the system light/dark mode setting, regardless of the terminal color theme. This means if you have light mode set at the OS level, but use a dark theme in Warp the text colors assume a light background and are unreadable on the dark background. There does not seem to be a way to force dark mode through the /theme settings.

Affected version

GitHub Copilot CLI 1.0.84-6

Steps to reproduce the behavior
  1. Set the Mac OS-level appearance to light mode.
  2. Choose a dark theme in the Warp terminal settings.
  3. Start Copilot.

Results:
Copilot launches in the correct (dark) theme, then switches to light mode colors. The text is difficult (in some cases impossible) to read.

Expected behavior

Copilot CLI should use a text theme appropriate to the terminal color theme, not the OS color theme.
If the terminal is set to a dark theme, use a dark text color theme regardless of the OS setting.

Additional context

Mac OS 15.7.9
Warp v0.2026.09.09.08.26.stable_02
Warp theme "Fancy Dracula"
GitHub Copilot CLI 1.0.84-6

Workarounds:

  • Changing the system-level appearance to dark causes Copilot to switch to the proper colors
  • Changing Warp to use a light theme makes the text readable again
  • Using the default Mac terminal seems to work as expected.
  • Reverting to Copilot v1.0.84-5 works as expected.
Dominant language
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Merged PRs (30d)
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