SGR 53 — Overlined
Render text with a line drawn ABOVE the glyphs — mirror of underline. Disable with SGR 55.
Byte forms
Every common string-literal form so you can paste-and-search either direction.
\x1b[53m\033[53m\e[53mESC [ 53 m1b 5b 35 33 6dDescription
Overline. ECMA-48 §8.3.117 defines SGR 53 as `OVERLINED` — a horizontal line drawn along the top of the glyph row, the mirror of underline. Disable with `\x1b[55m`. Adoption is uneven: kitty, wezterm, contour, ghostty, foot all implement it; xterm and most legacy terminals do not. Useful for marking text as struck-through-but-different (e.g., NATO message overlining, log severity markers, accentuated keys). If you need wide portability, pair the SGR 53 emission with a fallback (e.g., a Unicode combining overline `U+0305` on the previous char) so unsupported terminals still convey emphasis.
Spec citation: ECMA-48 §8.3.117 (SGR parameter 53)
Examples
printf '\033[53moverlined\033[55m back\033[0m\n'print('\x1b[53moverlined\x1b[0m')fmt.Print("\x1b[53moverlined\x1b[0m")console.log('\x1b[53moverlined\x1b[0m')printf("\x1b[53moverlined\x1b[0m\n");Terminal support
- xterm
- no
- Linux console (fbcon)
- no
- macOS Terminal.app
- no
- iTerm2
- partial
- Windows Terminal
- no
- cmd.exe / ConPTY
- no
- kitty
- yes
- alacritty
- no
- WezTerm
- yes
- Ghostty
- yes
- GNOME Terminal
- no
- Konsole
- partial
- tmux
- no
- GNU screen
- no
| xterm | Linux console (fbcon) | macOS Terminal.app | iTerm2 | Windows Terminal | cmd.exe / ConPTY | kitty | alacritty | WezTerm | Ghostty | GNOME Terminal | Konsole | tmux | GNU screen |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| no | no | no | partial | no | no | yes | no | yes | yes | no | partial | no | no |