Rapid blink
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Standard
Rapid blink (SGR 6) is an SGR attribute that causes text to blink at a rapid rate.
Syntax
CSI 6 m SGR 6 — Rapid blink
CSI 25 m SGR 25 — Not blinking (steady)
Formal syntax
SGR-rapid-blink = 0x1b, "[", "6", "m" ; SGR-steady = 0x1b, "[", "25", "m" ;
Description
Per ECMA-48 §8.3.117, SGR parameter 6 selects "rapidly blinking (150 per minute or more)." This is a faster blink rate than SGR 5 (slow blink).
Rapid blink is reset by SGR 25 or SGR 0.
Rapid blink is very rarely supported. Most terminals that support blinking at all treat SGR 6 the same as SGR 5 (slow blink) or ignore it entirely. The DEC VT terminals did not support rapid blink.
Examples
printf '\e[6mRapid blinking text\e[25m Steady text\n'
Specifications
| Specification | Section |
|---|---|
| VT510 Reference | — |
Terminal support
| Terminal | Support | Version | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Terminal Emulators | |||
| Alacritty | ✗ | No | |
| Bobcat | ? | ? | Implemented in external TerminalCtrl library, not in Bobcat source code |
| contour | ✓ | v0.3.2.202 | |
| foot | ✗ | No | Explicitly logged as ignored at csi.c:126 |
| Ghostty | ~ | v1.0.0 | Both slow and rapid blink map to same blink attribute |
| iTerm2 | ~ | Yes | Rapid blink (SGR 6) treated the same as slow blink (SGR 5). No distinction made between blink rates. |
| Kitty | ✗ | No | SGR 6 not implemented, treated same as SGR 5 |
| Konsole | ✗ | No | No separate rapid blink; SGR 6 not implemented, only SGR 5 (slow blink) |
| mintty | ✓ | Yes | Implemented at src/termout.c:2147. Sets ATTR_BLINK2 flag. |
| mlterm | ✓ | rel-3_3_7 | SGR 6 treated same as SGR 5 |
| PuTTY | ✓ | 0.43 | SGR 6 implemented as SCO light background mode at terminal.c:4660-4665 |
| Rio | ✓ | v0.0.3 | |
| rxvt-unicode | ✓ | 1.2 | Both slow (SGR 5) and rapid (SGR 6) blink map to same RS_Blink |
| st | ✓ | 0.4 | SGR 6 falls through to same as slow blink (SGR 5) |
| terminology | ✓ | v0.1.0 | Stored but not rendered; comment indicates no intent to support |
| VT100 | ✗ | No | |
| VTE | ✓ | Yes | Both slow and rapid blink map to same blink attribute |
| WezTerm | ✓ | Yes | |
| Windows Terminal | ✓ | Yes | SGR 6 treated as alias of slow blink (SGR 5) |
| xterm | ✓ | Yes | Treated same as slow blink, both map to BLINK |
| xterm.js | ✗ | No | Not implemented; SGR 5 slow blink is used instead |
| Multiplexers | |||
| cy | ✓ | v0.1.0 | Treated same as slow blink (SGR 5) |
| GNU Screen | ✗ | No | SGR 6 not supported (rendlist[6] = 0 at src/ansi.c:1703) |
| tmux | ✓ | 0.8 | Treated identically to slow blink (SGR 5) |
| tuios | ✓ | v0.0.15 | |
| Zellij | ✓ | v0.12.0 | |
See also
- Slow blink — SGR 5 — Slower blink rate