How do I get different colors for directories, etc. in iTerm2? I have a new MacBookPro, and I installed the latest release of iTerm2. 

Even after I imported various color schemes, I notice that they just change the color of the text and background only. 

What I was expecting to see were different colors for files VS directories, VS hidden files, etc etc. How do I do that on iTerm2? 

A related question is how do I actually specify what I want the colors of directories, files, etc to be?

Thanks
You have to do two things:


set the LSCOLORS environment variable
create an alias for ls so that it shows colors by default


In your ~/.bash_profile add the following:

export LSCOLORS="EHfxcxdxBxegecabagacad" 

alias ls='ls -lGH'        &lt;-----This shows in list format, follow symlinks colorized


The the colors are set by each bit above; the first being foreground and the second being background.   The first two characters refer to directories having a bold blue foreground and a light grey background.

However, there's a great online utility to see what each of the colors mean and look like in real time.  It will even generate the "code" for you.  (I am not affiliated with this at all).  It will work in both MacOS/FreeBSD and Linux.  Make sure you select the BSD option for macOS.

LSCOLORS Calculator



The order of the attributes are as follows: 



1.   directory
2.   symbolic link
3.   socket
4.   pipe
5.   executable
6.   block special
7.   character special
8.   executable with setuid bit set
9.   executable with setgid bit set
10.   directory writable to others, with sticky bit
11.   directory writable to others, without sticky


The color designators are as follows:


a    black
b    red
c    green
d    brown
e    blue
f    magenta
g    cyan
h    light grey
A    bold black, usually shows up as dark grey
B    bold red
C    bold green
D    bold brown, usually shows up as yellow
E    bold blue
F    bold magenta
G    bold cyan
H    bold light grey; looks like bright white
x    default foreground or background