How can I change the color of my prompt in zsh different from normal text

Question

To recognize better the start and the end of output on a commandline  I want to change the color of my prompt  so that it is visibly different from the programs output  As I use zsh  can anyone give me a hint

User · Answer

The answer by Bryan Oakley above has a glitch as it has already been pointed out and the solution offered by Andrew Marshall though it does not carry the glitch, nevertheless it does not make it obvious for too much customization on the colors used.

As macOS Catalina asks for zsh to be the default shell from now on, I think several more people may want to customize their prompt and might be coming here for an answer. So, I thought I would try to give a broader summary and touch upon other very closely-related notions that allow more customization.

3-Digit Codes for Various Colors. First of all, here we can find 3-digit codes for various colors: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/124409/194343. For example, 214 is some kind of orange color.

Foreground and Background. The other key information is that for Foreground and bacKground colors one can define what they want with F and K respectively. Source is zsh manual on visual effects: http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Prompt-Expansion.html#Visual-effects

So, for example, the following two commands

autoload -U colors && colors
export PS1="%F{214}%K{000}%m%F{015}%K{000}:%F{039}%K{000}%~%F{015}%K{000}\$ "

present the hostname in orange with black background, followed by a colon in white with black background, followed by the current working directory in bright blue with black background, followed by the dollar sign in white with black background.

More related information is found below.

Prompt information on the right-hand side. For example, adding a timestamp. See https://superuser.com/a/1251045/290299. Of course, this can be color-coded, for example with some light blue/purple-ish color, like this:

RPROMPT="%F{111}%K{000}[%D{%f/%m/%y}|%@]"

Colors for ls. After reading the manual for ls, one for example can activate the colors for ls using the following two commands:

export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=gafacadabaegedabagacad

Finally, as a last remark that I have not tested as I am happy with my configuration, another avenue might be for someone to install the port coreutils from MacPorts and then use gdircolors (source: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/174596/194343). (I may edit this last part in the future as all the above are related pieces that make every-day life much more fun and easier to cope with.)

User · Answer

Zsh comes with colored prompts builtin  Try  autoload -U promptinit  amp  amp  promptinit   and then prompt -l lists available prompts  -p fire previews the  fire  prompt  -s fire sets it   When you are ready to add a prompt add something like this below the autoload line above    prompt fade red

User · Answer

Try my favorite  put in     zshrc   this line   PROMPT   F 240  n F red   F green  m  F 141  d   F reset     don t forget  source    zshrc   to test the changes  you can change the colors color codes  of course  -

User · Answer

I have found that  with zsh5  the default one on Debian Jessie   all those solutions works       e 00m  fg white   fg white    Now  they have a problem  they will move the cursor  resulting in ugly decal when tabbing  for auto-completion   The solution is simply to surround the escape sequences with   FOOBAR    Took me a while to figure this  For 2nd and 3rd solutions loading colors module is mandatory  To keep the 1st solution readable  just define variables for the colors you use

User · Answer

To complement all of the above answers another convenient trick is to place the coloured prompt settings into a zsh function  There you may define local variables to alias longer commands  e g  rc  reset color or define your own colour variables  Don t forget to place it into your  zshrc file and call the function you have defined     Coloured prompt autoload -U colors  amp  amp  colors function myprompt     local rc  reset color   export PS1   F cyan  n   rc    F green  m   rc    F magenta      rc         myprompt

User · Answer

Put this in    zshrc   autoload -U colors  amp  amp  colors PS1     fg red    n   reset color      fg blue    m    fg yellow         reset color         Supported Colors  red  blue  green  cyan  yellow  magenta  black   amp  white  from this answer  although different computers may have different valid options   Surround color codes  and any other non-printable chars  with           This is for the text wrapping to work correctly   Additionally  here is how you can get this to work with the directory-trimming from here   PS1     fg red    n   reset color      fg blue    m    fg yellow     5   -1       3   4      reset color

User · Answer

man zshall and search for PROMPT EXPANSION  After reading the existing answers here  several of them are conflicting   I ve tried the various approaches on systems running zsh 4 2 and 5  and found that the reason these answers are conflicting is that they do not say which version of ZSH they are targeted at   Different versions use different syntax for this and some of them require various autoloads   So  the best bet is probably to man zshall and search for PROMPT EXPANSION to find out all the rules for your particular installation of zsh   Note in the comments  things like  I use Ubuntu 11 04 or 10 4 or OSX  Are not very meaningful as it s unclear which version of ZSH you are using   Ubuntu 11 04 does not imply a newer version of ZSH than ubuntu 10 04   There may be any number of reasons that an older version was installed   For that matter a newer version of ZSH does not imply which syntax to use without knowing which version of ZSH it is

User · Answer

In order to not waste space in the terminal with special characters to pieces of information  you can differentiate information using multiple colors  Eg  in order to get this desired effect   You can do the following to your prompt  PROMPT   F magenta   PWD   HOME     F green   vcs info msg 0    F cyan   F reset color     The way it works is every time you set a color using  F myColor  the color from that point onward will stick to that  It s important to add in   reset color  at the end so that the input text goes back to the original color  or you could set it to something else if you d like

User · Answer

Here s an example of how to set a red prompt    PS1    e 0 31m   e 0m    The magic is the  e 0 31m  turn on red foreground  and  e 0m  turn off character attributes   These are called escape sequences  Different escape sequences give you different results  from absolute cursor positioning  to color  to being able to change the title bar of your window  and so on   For more on escape sequences  see the wikipedia entry on ANSI escape codes

User · Answer

To get a prompt with the color depending on the last command   s exit status  you could use this   PS1       F green   F red   n  m       f    Just add this line to your    zshrc   The documentation lists possible placeholders

User · Answer

I don t think the autoload -U colors  amp  amp  colors is needed anymore and one can simply do   PS1     F red    n   f      F blue    m    F yellow          f         to achieve the same result as FireDude s answer  See the ZSH documentation for more info

[colors] How can I change the color of my prompt in zsh (different from normal text)?

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