How to colorize output of git?

You can create a section [color] in your ~/.gitconfig with e.g. the following content

[color]
  diff = auto
  status = auto
  branch = auto
  interactive = auto
  ui = true
  pager = true

You can also fine control what you want to have coloured in what way, e.g.

[color "status"]
  added = green
  changed = red bold
  untracked = magenta bold

[color "branch"]
  remote = yellow

I hope this gets you started. And of course, you need a terminal which supports colour.

You probably want to use

git config --global color.ui auto

The auto part says that git will only try and use color on terminals that support it, and you will not get ANSI sequences if you redirect output of git commands to a file for example. Setting it to true is same as auto, and this is also the default since Git 1.8.4.

The color.ui is a meta configuration that includes all the various color.* configurations available with git commands.

This is explained in-depth in git help config.

git config --global color.ui auto
git config --global color.branch auto
git config --global color.status auto