[Feature] ClickException message without color would be helpful

Similar to how some runtime environments don't support colors, it may be helpful to programmers that the non-colorized rendering of the ClickException message was available... something I was thinking when encountering and working around #2193.

Color shouldn't matter, nor should creating subclasses be necessary for verifying that the correct user-facing ClickException was raised with a certain message, for example in a test:

"""Tests for ClickException and exception handling."""
import click

def test_exception_message_no_color():
    """Base Exception message should be plain text."""
    exception = click.ClickException(click.style('red', fg='red') + ' text')

    assert 'red text' in str(exception) # fails currently

I'd think that __str__, and the possibly the message property too, should be rendered as plain text. I do have a simple StringIO patch that works, as well as just creating a subclass for my code if click is unpatched.

Relates to: #944

Closing this as Click already does this: to get the plain text of a styled message, call click.unstyle().

Click's own test suite cover this at:

click/tests/test_testing.py

Lines 229 to 246 in 8b19813

    
           def test_with_color_errors(): 
        
               class CLIError(ClickException): 
        
                   def format_message(self) -> str: 
        
                       return click.style(self.message, fg="red") 
        
               @click.command() 
        
               def cli(): 
        
                   raise CLIError("Red error") 
        
               runner = CliRunner() 
        
               result = runner.invoke(cli) 
        
               assert result.output == "Error: Red error\n" 
        
               assert result.exception 
        
               result = runner.invoke(cli, color=True) 
        
               assert result.output == f"Error: {click.style('Red error', fg='red')}\n" 
        
               assert result.exception

As a definitive proof, I added some more tests in #3899

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[Feature] `ClickException` message without color would be helpful #2419

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	def test_with_color_errors():
	class CLIError(ClickException):
	def format_message(self) -> str:
	return click.style(self.message, fg="red")

	@click.command()
	def cli():
	raise CLIError("Red error")

	runner = CliRunner()

	result = runner.invoke(cli)
	assert result.output == "Error: Red error\n"
	assert result.exception

	result = runner.invoke(cli, color=True)
	assert result.output == f"Error: {click.style('Red error', fg='red')}\n"
	assert result.exception

[Feature] ClickException message without color would be helpful #2419

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kdeldycke commented on Oct 29, 2026

kdeldycke commented on Oct 29, 2026

kdeldycke commented on Oct 29, 2026

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[Feature] `ClickException` message without color would be helpful #2419