Pipe jq with colors into less
Created on April 20, 2026 Updated on June 3, 2026
commandline
You can pipe the output of jq to less and show colors with jq -C and less -R.
cat data.json | jq -C | less -R
cat data.json | jq --color-output | less --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS
# small -r works too
cat data.json | jq -C | less -r
cat data.json | jq --color-output | less --raw-control-chars