C#

Change Console Foreground And Background Color In C#

In one of my recent applications, I needed to change the foreground and the background colors of the system console.

The Console class in C# represents the system console. We can achieve this by setting Console’s foreground and background properties. The ConsoleColor enum represents a value of the console color. Keep in mind, the ConsoleColor supports a limited number of colors only.

The following code snippet returns the current background and the foreground colors of the console.

  1. ConsoleColor background = Console.BackgroundColor;  
  2. ConsoleColor foreground = Console.ForegroundColor;  

The following code snippet sets the foreground and the background colors of the console.

  1. Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.White;  
  2. Console.BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.Red;  

After ForegroundColor and BackgroundColor values are set, call Console.Clear() to apply it to the entire background and foreground.

  1. Console.Clear();  
The ResetColor method resets the console’s default foreground and background colors.
  1. Console.ResetColor();  

Listing 1 is the complete code that loops through all Console colors and changes console’s background and foreground colors.

  1. using System;  
  2. class ConsoleColorsClass {  
  3.     static void Main(string[] args) {  
  4.         // Let's go through all Console colors and set them as foreground  
  5.         foreach(ConsoleColor color in Enum.GetValues(typeof(ConsoleColor))) {  
  6.             Console.ForegroundColor = color;
                Console.Clear();
  7.             Console.WriteLine($ "Foreground color set to {color}");  
  8.         }  
  9.         Console.WriteLine("=====================================");  
  10.         Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.White;  
  11.         // Let's go through all Console colors and set them as background  
  12.         foreach(ConsoleColor color in Enum.GetValues(typeof(ConsoleColor))) {  
  13.             Console.BackgroundColor = color;  
  14.             Console.WriteLine($ "Background color set to {color}");  
  15.         }  
  16.         Console.WriteLine("=====================================");  
  17.         // Restore original colors  
  18.         Console.ResetColor(); 
  19.         Console.ReadKey();  
  20.     }  
  21. }  
Listing 1.

The output of Listing 1 generates Figure 1.

 
Figure 1

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