diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 8aaf007..4cd037b 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 # Changelog
 
 All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.
+## [Unreleased]
+- Enabled ANSI formatting in the tracing formatter whenever stderr is attached to a terminal so colorized updater messages render correctly instead of showing escape sequences. 
 
 ## [1.51.0]
 - Added diff-only Git scanning via `--since-commit` and `--branch`, including remote-aware ref resolution so CI jobs can pair `--git-url` clones with pull request branches
diff --git a/src/main.rs b/src/main.rs
index d44019f..89d9cf5 100644
--- a/src/main.rs
+++ b/src/main.rs
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ static GLOBAL: System = System;
 // static GLOBAL: System = System;
 
 use std::{
-    io::Read,
+    io::{IsTerminal, Read},
     sync::{Arc, Mutex},
 };
 
@@ -122,7 +122,7 @@ fn setup_logging(global_args: &GlobalArgs) {
     let fmt_layer = fmt::layer()
         .with_writer(std::io::stderr) // Write logs to stderr
         .with_target(true) // Enable target filtering
-        .with_ansi(false) // Disable colors
+        .with_ansi(std::io::stderr().is_terminal()) // Emit ANSI colours when stderr is a TTY
         .without_time(); // Remove timestamps
                          // Build and initialize the registry
     registry()