Terminal Prompt Formatting
By Justin
When you open up Terminal for the first time, you'll probably want to format it to suit your needs. This post shows you some formatting tips.
Since Terminal is the command line utility for Mac and Linux, this guide is just for Mac and Linux users.
Adjusting your terminal prompt's default message is simple. The default I use is:
# ~/.bash_profile
export PS1="$ "
To me, it's clean and removes uncessary information just like most guides you'll see online.
console
$
Example with a virtual environment activated
If you're new to terminal, you can ignore this for now.
console
(myvenv) $
Editing
To change your default terminal prompt from
console
justins-mbp:~ jmitch$
The only command you need is export PS1= and then set the string with the commands below.
If you want to keep a new format, just edit your .bash_profile with:
console
justins-mbp:~ jmitch$ nano ~/.bash_profile
Permission error? You might need to use sudo prior. So the comamnd is sudo nano ~/.bash_profile
Once you open up .bash_profile just add the line
export PS1="$ "
Replace the string "$ " with any command you see below.
Commands
\u\W\w\d\t\h\#Examples
Current User \u
# ~/.bash_profile
export PS1="\u $ "
Result
console
jmitch $
Command Number \#
# ~/.bash_profile
export PS1="(\#) $"
Result
console
(1) $ 1 $ cd desktop
(2) $ ls
Screen Shot 2018-11-17 at 9.35.09 AM.png
todo.md
(3)
Date + Time and User \d:\t
# ~/.bash_profile
export PS1="\d:\t - \u $ "
Result
console
Sat Nov 17:09:16:28 - jmitch $
Current directory
# ~/.bash_profile
export PS1="\W $ "
Result
console
desktop $
Current directory w/ path
# ~/.bash_profile
export PS1="\w $ "
Result
console
~/desktop $