I’m looking for inspiration for a custom Bash prompt[1]. I’d love to see yours! 😊 If possible, include both the prompt’s PS1, and a screenshot/example of what it looks like.

References
  1. Type: Documentation. Title: “Bash Reference Manual”. Publisher: Gnu Project. Edition: 5.2. Published: 2022-09-19. Accessed: 2025-03-21T02:46Z. URI: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/index.html.

Crossposts:

    • Ephera
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      1825 days ago

      Same. I guess, this is the Starship thread now. My config:

      I adapted it from the Gruvbox Rainbow theme.
      I can post my config, if anyone wants specifically that. (It does kind of assume a light background, though.)

      • nelson
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        325 days ago

        I like the timer and the error icon on a fail. I can’t recall how often I think: damn this is taking too long. I should’ve timed the command

    • billwashere
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      125 days ago

      Yeah I’m gonna check this out at work next week for sure.

    • Mike Wooskey
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      225 days ago

      Starships looks very interesting! I’m going to check it out. Thanks!

    • @[email protected]
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      225 days ago

      Another starship user. Mostly want it to summarise useful stuff for folders pulled from git or whatever so it’s pretty plain rest of the time. I use the same on all my boxes

    • @[email protected]
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      325 days ago

      I recently started with fish and dislike that I can’t drop bash commands into it because it parses differently. That is enough to annoy me to uninstall.

      • @[email protected]
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        925 days ago

        You shouldn’t just “drop bash commands into it” anyways. And if you really need it, bash is only one bash away.

    • Drew
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      325 days ago

      I love it! You get git and virtual env integration for free :)

    • @[email protected]
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      425 days ago

      Fish is a really great shell for daily use. There’s so much built in, its scripting language is better (not portable though if someone else does not have fish).

      • @[email protected]
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        325 days ago

        By now, enough people have fish that you can basically assume those scripts being “portable”. Far better than nushell or xonsh - which are both pretty advanced shells but other tools lack support for them, e.g. Midnight Commander.

  • @[email protected]
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    1026 days ago
    export PS1="\[\e[31m\][\[\e[m\]\[\e[38;5;172m\]\u\[\e[m\]@\[\e[38;5;153m\]\h\[\e[m\] \[\e[38;5;214m\]\W\[\e[m\]\[\e[31m\]]\[\e[m\]\\$ "
    
        • billwashere
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          325 days ago

          Best I can tell is it’s a normal `username@hostname current_directory$ sorta prompt with some coloring: • Red for the square brackets • Orange (color 172) for the username • Light blue (color 153) for the hostname • Amber (color 214) for the current working directory

          Other than being hard to read from the embedded coloring I’m not sure why this is a war crime.

  • @[email protected]
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    1126 days ago

    Prompt is pretty simple, mainly just adjusted coloring and added a timestamp.

    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;36;01m\]\t \[\033[01;32m\]\u@\[\033[01;37;01m\]\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;36m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '

  • @[email protected]
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    825 days ago

    I didn’t even know I needed to edit my prompt, but now I don’t know how I have lived with it for so long.

  • z3rOR0ne
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    25 days ago

    I use zsh, but my old Bash prompt looks almost the same as my Zsh prompt. Sorry, no screenshot, but here’s the code:

    export PS1='\[\033[01;34m\][\[\033[01;37m\] \W\[\033[01;34m\]]\$\033[01;34m\] $(git branch 2>/dev/null | grep '^*' | colrm 1 2)\n\033[01;34m└─>\033[37m '
    
  • @[email protected]
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    525 days ago

    Mine is simple (inspired by Kali Linux, if that’s even correct)
    PS1='\[\033[0;32m\]┌──[\t] (\u@\h)-[\w]\n└─$ \[\033[0m\]'

  • @[email protected]
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    25 days ago

    I’m mainly using zsh but I have a backup bash prompt that closely mirrors it. It shows the return value of the previous command if it’s non-zero and gives some information about the current git repository if there is one.

    retval() {
            if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
                    printf ""
            else
                    printf "\001\e[31m\002($?)\001\e[0m\002"
            fi
    }
    
    gitbranch() {
            if type git 2> /dev/null 1> /dev/null && git rev-parse 2> /dev/null 1> /dev/null ; then
                    MODIFIED=""
                    if [[ -n $(git status --short) ]]; then
                            MODIFIED=" M"
                    fi
                    BRANCH=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)
                    SHORTREF=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD)
                    printf "\001\e[31m\002%s\001\e[0m\002(%s)\001\e[31m\002%s\001\e[0m\002" $BRANCH $SHORTREF $MODIFIED
            else
                    echo -n ""
            fi
    }
    
    export PROMPT_DIRTRIM=3
    
    PS1='$(retval)[\001\e[1;95m\002\u\001\e[0m\002@\h : \w $(gitbranch)] \$ '
    PS2='> '
    

  • Mike Wooskey
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    26 days ago

    Mine shows the user and host, git commit and branch, docker context and directory, color coded based on status of git:

    [root@server001|G:19e526e@(master)|D:myContext|currentDir] $

    ## PS1 adapted from https://gist.github.com/xenji/2292341
    ps1_generator() {
        # docker context inspect --format '{{ .Name }}'
        Time12h="\T"; Time12a="\@"; ShortHost="\h"; Username="\u";
        PathShort="\W"; PathFull="\w"; NewLine="\n"; Jobs="\j";
        test -f ~/.config/git-prompt.sh || \
            curl -L https://raw.github.com/git/git/master/contrib/compl
    etion/git-prompt.sh \
                 > ~/.config/git-prompt.sh
        source ~/.config/git-prompt.sh
        Color_Off="\[\033[0m\]"; IBlack="\[\033[0;90m\]"; BWhite="\[\03
    3[1;37m\]"; BGreen="\[\033[1;32m\]";
        BIRed="\[\033[1;91m\]"; BIWhite="\[\033[1;97m\]"; BIPurple="\[\
    033[1;95m\]"; BIBlue="\[\033[1;94m\]";
        GIT_PS1='$(git branch &>/dev/null;\
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then \
      echo "$(echo `git status` | \grep "nothing to commit" > /dev/null
     2>&1; \
      DIRTY="$?"; \
      HEADREV=`git log --pretty=%h -n 1`; \
      echo -n "|G:'${BWhite}'$HEADREV"; \
      if [ "$DIRTY" -eq "0" ]; then \
        # @4 - Clean repository - nothing to commit
        echo "@'${BGreen}'"$(__git_ps1 "(%s)"); \
      else \
        # @5 - Changes to working tree
        echo "'${BIBlue}'@'${BIRed}'"$(__git_ps1 "{%s}"); \
      fi)'${Color_Off}'"; \
    else \
      # @2 - Prompt when not in GIT repo
      echo ""; \
    fi)'
        if docker context inspect >/dev/null 2>&1; then
            DOCKER_PS1='|D:'${BIBlue}'$(docker context inspect --format
     "{{ .Name }}")'${Color_Off}
        fi
        USER_PS1=${BIPurple}${Username}'@'${ShortHost}${Color_Off}
        PATH_PS1='|'${BWhite}${PathShort}${Color_Off}
        export PS1='['${USER_PS1}${GIT_PS1}${DOCKER_PS1}${PATH_PS1}'] $
     '
    }
    ps1_generator && unset -f ps1_generator