On a secondary workstation, open the Highlight Sets manager, click Import , and target the .xhl file.
If you group your sessions by vendor, you can apply the highlight set strictly to your Cisco folder: Open the .
files to share with your team or move them to a different machine via the Xshell Highlight Sets Menu Case Sensitivity:
Primary structural commands and structural configuration blocks. reset , change , warning , denied xshell highlight sets cisco
Pattern: \b(GigabitEthernet\|TenGigabitEthernet\|FastEthernet\|Ethernet\|Vlan\|Loopback)[0-9\/.]+\b
[^0-9A-Za-z_&-](localhost|([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-4])\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+|null|none)[^0-9A-Za-z_-]
Highighting doesn't turn on automatically for old sessions. To enable it: Right-click your active session or go to Session Properties Navigate to Appearance Highlight Set dropdown, select your newly created Cisco_Network_Monitor 💡 Pro-Tips for Cisco Admins Export/Import: You can export your highlight sets as On a secondary workstation, open the Highlight Sets
Without Highlights:
Interface drops, protocol failures, or severe system errors. up , established , SUCCESS , active
box for dynamic patterns like IP addresses or specific status codes. For exact word matches only, use patterns like to avoid highlighting partial matches. Customize Appearance reset , change , warning , denied Pattern:
Examples * BGP Summary (Cisco / Arista) * Interface Status (Cisco / Arista / JunOS) * Route Maps (Cisco / Arista) * Prefix Lists (
Xshell supports Perl-compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) . This is your superpower. Instead of writing 100 rules for every error message, you can write 10 regex patterns.
As a network administrator or engineer, working with Cisco devices can be a daily task. When using Xshell, a popular SSH client, to connect to these devices, it can be helpful to have certain commands or keywords highlighted for better visibility and efficiency. In this blog post, we will walk through the steps to configure Xshell to highlight Cisco commands.
: Security alerts, ACL denials, or crypto VPN statuses. The Ultimate Cisco Keyword Blueprint
: Use different colors for IP addresses, interface IDs (e.g., GigabitEthernet ), and protocol states to parse complex command outputs at a glance. How to Create a Cisco Highlight Set in Xshell