How do I colorize the chmod privileges string?

I am using dired+ and dired-hacks and have the ability to colorize the FILES based on the chmod string, but I want the string itself to have colors. I had this a little bit ago but somehow it went away.

For example, each column in so that the eye can follow the colors down and easily see permission differences within a directory.

WRONG answerrr

Turns out it IS included in dired-plus, but some themes overwrite it, and you won’t see these changes in buffers already open (unlike other theme changes). This led me to think it wasn’t working after I went to an incompatible theme. Really I just needed to choose a working theme and open a NEW dired view, not refreshing an old one.

Answer

My previous answer leaned on dired+, but it wasn’t as full as I wished and it stopped working again randomly (meaning it was configured in some state or theme or load-order that I don’t understand). Instead, I’ve found an answer that is dependable with diredfl , which is as simple as this:

(use-package diredfl :ensure t
  :config
  (add-hook 'dired-mode-hook 'diredfl-mode))

then you’re just a customize-faces diredfl- away from customizing any of the dired faces you wish.

Resources

• Reddit Question
• diredfl for easily customizing the colors