OSX Terminal Fun V: A Better Prompt

The default prompt for OSX is fine, by and large, it's just a little wordy (partly due to using rendevous conventions for the host name), and I like a little whitespace between prompts to seperate them better as well as moving the current working path onto its own line to minimize wrapping for commands by giving them as much horizontal space as possible.

Click on the picture to the right to see mine, as it's what the instructions below will get you.

This one is pretty easy, from the terminal type:

	% pico -w ~/Library/init/tcsh/rc.mine

You'll be greeted with an empty file, and you want to copy and paste the below into it.

	set prompt="\n%B[%n]%b @ %B[%~]%b\n %# "

Be careful, there are some important spaces in there. Hit control-x and save it out, and close your Terminal.app window. Create a new terminal window and you should see your new and improved terminal prompt.

Depending on the background color of your terminal window you may want to go into the color preferences and change the color for bold to be something easy on the eyes (you can see mine to the right here).

If you're curious about customizing it more, do "% man tcsh" and down towards the bottom you'll find all sorts of other variables you can use.

Personally I use a black background with a 10% transparency, and a light blue color set as bold... generally the default colors for "ls" and such assume a black background. Plus, Apple's Aqua interface is just so damn bright that having some black thrown in can feel good.

But a nice alternative can be to set your background to a silver or light gray wit black text, I use that every once in awhile when my eyes need a break from the black.

If at any time you want to return your prompt to the way it was, simply move or rename the rc.mine file.