diff --git a/Cargo.lock b/Cargo.lock
index 73e548ae5a5fa..ac854fb0faa16 100644
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/Cargo.lock
@@ -1386,6 +1386,7 @@ dependencies = [
  "signal-hook-tokio",
  "smallvec",
  "tempfile",
+ "termini",
  "tokio",
  "tokio-stream",
  "toml",
diff --git a/helix-term/Cargo.toml b/helix-term/Cargo.toml
index a0d6754d07220..f3343b7a4ef56 100644
--- a/helix-term/Cargo.toml
+++ b/helix-term/Cargo.toml
@@ -42,6 +42,7 @@ signal-hook = "0.3"
 tokio-stream = "0.1"
 futures-util = { version = "0.3", features = ["std", "async-await"], default-features = false }
 arc-swap = { version = "1.6.0" }
+termini = "1"
 
 # Logging
 fern = "0.6"
diff --git a/helix-term/src/lib.rs b/helix-term/src/lib.rs
index b1413ed0d9722..4a6c4014211a6 100644
--- a/helix-term/src/lib.rs
+++ b/helix-term/src/lib.rs
@@ -22,17 +22,30 @@ use url::Url;
 
 pub use keymap::macros::*;
 
-#[cfg(not(windows))]
-fn true_color() -> bool {
-    std::env::var("COLORTERM")
-        .map(|v| matches!(v.as_str(), "truecolor" | "24bit"))
-        .unwrap_or(false)
-}
 #[cfg(windows)]
 fn true_color() -> bool {
     true
 }
 
+#[cfg(not(windows))]
+fn true_color() -> bool {
+    if std::env::var("COLORTERM")
+        .map(|v| matches!(v.as_str(), "truecolor" | "24bit"))
+        .is_ok()
+    {
+        return true;
+    }
+
+    match termini::TermInfo::from_env() {
+        Ok(t) => {
+            t.extended_cap("RGB").is_some()
+                || t.extended_cap("Tc").is_some()
+                || (t.extended_cap("setrgbf").is_some() && t.extended_cap("setrgbb").is_some())
+        }
+        Err(_) => false,
+    }
+}
+
 /// Function used for filtering dir entries in the various file pickers.
 fn filter_picker_entry(entry: &DirEntry, root: &Path, dedup_symlinks: bool) -> bool {
     // We always want to ignore the .git directory, otherwise if