Zsh Color Prompt

A black & white terminal has a certain charme, yet you might be looking for a little more color.

I added color to my zsh prompt like this by changing my ~/.zshrc:

export PS1="%F{#C6A0F6}%n@%m :: %~${NEWLINE}%#%f "

There are multiple things going on here. First it starts a color section by providing %F{#C6A0F6} Everything that follows this code is going to be printed in color, here a shade of purple. The color code is provided in RGB HEX, as widely used in HTML/CSS styling.

The opening clause %F has to be closed again, otherwise everything will be printed in purple. That’s what %f is doing at the end of the statement. In summary, everything between %F{} and %f is printed in color.

My prompt is divided in two lines separated by ${NEWLINE}. The first line contains the username %n with hostname %m, as well as the current directory %~. The second line just contains a prompt symbol %#.