Better Terminal Prompt (easy)
Created on July 2, 2025 Updated on July 8, 2025
terminals
The default prompt is not ideal to help you at the terminal. With a simple update of the PS1 (bash) or the PROMPT (zsh) env var, you can have a much better terminal experience.
on my own mac or Linux, I use the fantastic starship.rs to make my shell look great.
I spend a lot of times on remote servers. e.g. on build agents or on servers running apps.
When I login to remote servers, I don’t want to install my usual shell tools such as starship, fzf or others.
I was living with the regular shell prompt for a long time. But it makes the user experience very different.
I have just discovered a very nice and simple way to 10x your user experience on the shell.
# .zshrc
PROMPT=$'\n%n@%m on %~\n%# '
# .bashrc
PS1='\n\u@\h on \w\n\$ '
This makes the shell look as follows (examples run in a debian docker container):
before:
❯ docker run --rm -ti debian
root@7540a5ffcec9:/# echo hello world
hello world
root@7540a5ffcec9:/# pwd
/
root@7540a5ffcec9:/# mkdir -p Users/david/
root@7540a5ffcec9:/# cd Users/david
root@7540a5ffcec9:/Users/david# ls
root@7540a5ffcec9:/Users/david# <your-prompt-is-here>
after:
- the cursor is always at the same place
- past commands are clearly visible due to the additional new line
❯ docker run --rm -ti debian
root@c82e7b0da17a:/# PS1='\n\u@\h on \w\n\$ '
root@c82e7b0da17a on /
# echo hello world
hello world
root@c82e7b0da17a on /
# pwd
/
root@c82e7b0da17a on /
# mkdir -p Users/david
root@c82e7b0da17a on /
# cd Users/david/
root@c82e7b0da17a on /Users/david
# ls
root@c82e7b0da17a on /Users/david
# <your-prompt-is-here>
You can add colors like so:
# zsh:
# syntax: %F{color}very-prompt-such-wow%f
export PROMPT=$'\n%F{magenta}%n%f%F{cyan}@%m%f on %F{blue}%~%f\n%# '
# bash:
PS1='\n\[\e[32m\]\u@\h\[\e[0m\]:\[\e[34m\]\w\[\e[0m\]\n\$ '
On Powershell:
function prompt { "`n$env:USERNAME@$env:COMPUTERNAME on $(Get-Location)`nPS> " }