Read Cisco IOS / IOS-XE configs and show output in Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager the way you
read them in your editor: interfaces, keywords, your own names and addresses, and anything that's
down or disabled stand out at a glance — in every SSH session, on every switch.
| Plain RDM | With this profile |
|---|---|
 |
 |
- The same colours as your editor. The palette comes from the Cisco IOS/IOS-XE IntelliSense extension for VS Code, so a config looks the same while you write it and on the live switch.
- Just two files to import. A highlighting profile for RDM, plus optional terminal colours. No plugin, no script, nothing that runs.
- Made for real output. Whole-word matching, case-sensitive, tuned on production configs: no
colour bleeding into the rest of the line, no
Fa/Te/Loprefixes lighting upFailed,TelnetorLocal.
Interfaces in yellow, block keywords in green, options like access, trunk, in or portfast in
violet, protocols in teal. Your own values — IP and MAC addresses, host, VRF, ACL and class-map
names, secrets — stay bright, so they're easy to find in a long config.
no … lines, shutdown, deny, down, notconnect and failure are red; disabled,
err-disabled and device-tracking lines orange; up, connected, permit and success green.
That works in show output too:
Banner art, descriptions and everything the profile has no opinion about keep the terminal's normal
text colour. snmp-server lines are coloured as a whole, with their addresses still standing out.
| Colour | What |
|---|---|
| green | interface, description, vlan, aaa, table headers; good state (up, permit, connected, success); ! lines |
| red | no …, bad state (down, deny, shutdown, notconnect, failure), --More-- |
| orange | notices: disabled, err-disabled, device-tracking lines |
| violet | ACL / policy keywords (access-group, route-map, class-map, …) and options (access, trunk, in, any, match-all, portfast, …) |
| teal | protocols (ssh, tcp, bgp, ospf, vrf, …), authentication/authorization/accounting, whole snmp-server lines |
| yellow | interfaces (GigabitEthernet1/0/1, Vlan10, Po1, LISP0.100, …), line con/vty, address-family |
| white | your values: IPv4/IPv6/MAC addresses, host/ACL/VRF/class-map names, secrets |
| plain | banner art and everything else |
Download the latest release (zip) and pick the folder that matches your terminal:
| Folder | For a terminal with | Files |
|---|---|---|
default-background/ |
RDM's default black background | RDM-Cisco-Vivid.xml |
vscode-background/ |
VS Code's dark background (#232425) |
RDM-Cisco-Vivid.xml + Daybreak-RDM-Dark.txt (terminal colours) |
Every rule paints its own background in that colour, so the other folder's profile would show boxes behind coloured words.
All settings are under File → Settings → Entry Types → Sessions → Terminal (RDM 2026.3, Windows).
1. Font. On the General tab, under Terminal font: tick Override terminal font, Style Consolas, Size 11, Bold mode Change font and color, Font quality Anti-aliased. RDM's default terminal font is thin enough to wash every colour out.
2. Terminal colours (vscode-background only). Colors → Override mode: Override (single
profile) → Import → Daybreak-RDM-Dark.txt. Export your current colours first if you may want
to go back.
| Before (RDM default) | After the import |
|---|---|
 |
 |
3. A new profile. Syntax highlighting → + → name it, e.g. Cisco-Vivid.
4. The rules. Inside that profile's rule list: Import → RDM-Cisco-Vivid.xml → Save. All
24 rules show Custom colours.
5. Use it everywhere. Back on Syntax highlighting, set Default profile to Cisco-Vivid → Save. Every SSH session now uses it. To use it on some entries only, leave the default empty and pick the profile in the entry's Terminal → Display instead.
Connect to a switch and run show running-config.
- Import adds rules below the existing ones, and the rule higher up wins. Import into an empty profile; to update, delete the old rules first.
- Import inside the profile's rule list. On the list of profiles RDM answers
<SyntaxHighlightingItemList> was not expected. - Banners. RDM colours one line at a time, so banner lines are recognised by their first
character (
|,+,*, …). A banner line starting with a letter is coloured like config.
- Cisco IOS/IOS-XE IntelliSense for VS Code (Open VSX · GitHub): completions, hover docs, error checking and rename for Cisco configs — where these colours come from.
The rule set started from alalexiev's Cisco IOS / IOS-XE / IOS-XR highlighting profile on the Devolutions forum (2021). Its word lists were repaired and extended with the VS Code extension's keyword set.
Not affiliated with Devolutions or Cisco. Remote Desktop Manager is a product of Devolutions Inc.; Cisco and IOS are trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc.