Some people like to put, for example, their current git branch in the prompt. To get that means at least naively, running a git command on every single line the prompt renders on. Git is fast, but it's easy to add a bunch of these and suddenly your prompt takes 100ms to render. Hit enter a few times and you'll immediately notice lag. For that reason, doing this fast does make a real difference.

Of course the fastest thing is to just not stuff your prompt full of detail.

Every single time your prompt appears, your shell is doing something. I've tried using various prompt customising things in the past, but they've almost all been written in shell, and always been palpably slow. To the degree that I've found it irritating and stopped using them.

Starship is the first one that hasn't irritated me, in no small part because it's lightning fast, typically only couple of milliseconds to gather and render the prompt.

This is the first time I've been able to stick with one.

In this case it‘s about the actual startup time of your shell. When launching a new terminal, starship always need to perform its initialization. If it were slow, I wouldn’t use it because waiting seconds before being able to input anything is kind of annoying. That‘s what they’re referring to.

I used to use spaceship prompt before this, and it would often take 5s to open up a new terminal and wait for the prompt to load, starship is always instant (like a prompt should be).

I've tried tools in this space which add hundreds of milliseconds to a shell's start-up time. That's easily noticeable, especially when the system is under heavy load.

I like maximalist prompts, and indeed Starship is what Shell Bling Ubuntu [1] installs on a new dev machine. But they're not everyone's cup of tea.

If I wanted to recommend to someone the min-maxed, highest density thing they could add to their prompt, it would simply be the time your current prompt appeared + the amount of time the last command you ran took.

These two pieces of information together make it very easy for you (or your local sysadmin (or an LLM looking over your digital shoulder)) to piece together a log of exactly what happened when. This kind of psuedo-non-repudiation can be invaluable for debugging sessions when you least expect it.

This was a tip I distilled from Michael W. Lucas's Networking for System Administrators a few years ago, which remains my preferred recommendation for any developers looking to learn just enough about networking to not feel totally lost when talking to an actual network engineer.

Bonus nerd points if you measure time in seconds since the UNIX epoch. Very easy and fast to run time delta calculations if you do that:

    [0 1719242840] $ echo "foo"
    [0 1719242905] $ echo "fell asleep before hitting enter" && sleep 5
    [5 1719242910] $

[1]: https://github.com/hiAndrewQuinn/shell-bling-ubuntu

    > history | get 82076
    ╭─────────────────┬──────────────────╮
    │ start_timestamp │ 2025-06-24 16:46 │
    │ command         │ mpc play         │
    │ cwd             │ /home/work       │
    │ duration        │ 1ms              │
    │ exit_status     │ 0                │
    ╰─────────────────┴──────────────────╯

     history | where exit_status == 127 | last | get duration
    2sec 410ms

      × Types 'duration' and 'int' are not compatible for the '-' operator.
       ╭─[entry #47:1:2]
     1 │ (history | where exit_status == 127 | last | get duration) - 10
       ·  ───┬───                                                   ┬ ─┬
       ·     │                                                      │  ╰── int
       ·     │                                                      ╰── does not operate between 'duration' and 'int'
       ·     ╰── duration
       ╰────

    int history_write_timestamps
       If non-zero, timestamps are written to the history file, so they can be preserved between sessions.  The default value is 0, [...]

I would be very curious to see an age demographic chart of people using e.g. Starship.

Personally, over time, I have stopped caring too much about prompt customization. I concluded that, no matter how carefully you curate your prompt, 90% of the information shown will be irrelevant 90% of the time*. After a while, your brain will start perceiving this as visual clutter and filter it out, to the point you may even forget the information is there, right in front of your eyes.

And for the things that matter, you probably need more details than any prompt can show you. E.g. are there changes in your git branch? Ok there are, good to know, but which files have changed? Just knowing that there are changes is not really actionable information. You need to run additional commands to get actionable details.

* the numbers are completely arbitrary, but you get the picture

Ignore the haters - I too am a fan of minimalism in my terminal since I don't appreciate unnecessary clutter or decoration, but context is king and Starship can be configured as such.

By default my prompt is a shows me the current directory, the time, and a single character '%'. If I set something in my environment for which I need to be contextually aware - i.e if I have KUBECONFIG or OS_CLOUD - then the prompt is updated with the detail. Similar for languages - it'll automatically show me the version of Go or Python or whatever based on a few factors, all of which I can control.

The reason I love Starship is that it's made all this very, very easy to configure - instead of having to wade through arcane Zsh configuration or additional plugins, Starship makes it easy. It also adds negligible overhead to initialisation, especially when done so via evalcache [0]

[0] https://github.com/mroth/evalcache

Fan of starship here. wanted to drop a few comments based on what I seen so far

Love the performance. Written in Rust and compiled to binary, it's _much_ faster than either python-based powerline, the bash-shell-based ohmybash and zshell-based ohmyzsh and spaceship.

You can use it for zsh, bash, sh, fish. but you can also use it for both MS Windows CMD and Powershell. I don't believe any other prompt tools can do all at the same time. And a single config file can control all of them on your system.

The default config is just that - a default. Too much information? you can change it. dont like icons? you can remove them.

At almost 100 modules to choose from, it's customization options are nearly limitless

I don’t understand why they market this as “minimal”. It’s got loads of features, and every time I see somebody use it they have a huge prompt with loads of bells and whistles.

My shell prompt is:

    : ▶

You don’t need an entire shell prompt customisation framework to be minimal.

    format = """
    $username\
    $hostname\
    $shlvl\
    $directory\
    $git_branch\
    $git_commit\
    $git_state\
    $git_metrics\
    $git_status\
    $package\
    $python\
    $rust\
    $env_var\
    $custom\
    $cmd_duration\
    $jobs\
    $time\
    $status\
    $shell\
    $character"""

  PROMPT='%{%F{red}%}%~ %{%F{yellow}%}% › %{%F{reset_color}%}%'

I really like this one for just being a single install and then no more fiddling. I don’t have time for any of that shit, but I do want to know whether my current shell is on node 20 or 22, rust stable or nightly. Getting all of that without extra effort is great.

What am I missing? I went to the site, but I can find nothing to suggest why I might want to use this. Are there examples that I've missed, likely owing to having been heads down chasing a pernicious heisenbug all day?

Given that I do like my shiny prompt, which shows me:

  The result of the last command (in green, red, or purple)
  user@host:currentDirectory
  current branch, if in a repo

with the last line showing summary git status, if in a repo, and background jobs, I suspect I might be their market, but I cannot see a why anywhere.

(Green: Last command good, e.g., exit 0) (Red: Last command non-zero exit, with a special indicator if it was interrupted) (Purple: Last command suspended, and few other things)

I tried starship a few years ago and found it too "extra" and sluggish. I'm sure it may have improved in this time, but I ended up sticking with the excellent Hydro[0], only for fish though.

It's very minimal while having useful features: - exit codes, even for pipelines - git branch, status (displayed as a dot if your tree is dirty) and ahead/behind counts - command execution time (if above some configurable threshold) - truncated/minified $CWD, always maintaining the git root's name (I sometimes like it, sometimes don't; fortunately, it's very easy to change) - current vi-like mode (I don't use that)

It's very fast and async (prompt repaints don't block your input or running commands), and totals 132 lines of fish (according to cloc[1]). It's also very customisable through variables, which can be declared as universal to instantly change on all sessions you have open.

If you're on fish and like this feature set, definitely give it a shot, or at least look at the code as a base for a bespoke prompt :P

[0]: https://github.com/jorgebucaran/hydro [1]: https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc

I've been a happy starship user for a few years at this point (after a long time with oh-my-zsh). For me, it's killer feature is the `starship.toml` file. Gone are the days of arcane bash escape sequences to style the prompt. It's a well-documented shape and easy to reason about. So no matter if you got maximalist or minimalist for your, it's easy to tweak. That rocks.

I live in the terminal, so I wrote my own prompt ages ago when I started learning Go[1][2], and before that I had a simple prompt in bash.

I like to keep things very simple and fast, so the directory and the git branch is all I need. I wonder if people really use all that information or if they set it up thinking they need it, but then never do.

[1]: https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/gosh

[2]: I should probably update that now that I know a “bit” more Go.

It looks nice.

I usually like simple prompt, but there is one feature I really like, it's the timestamp. It helps me remember when I did something and how long it tooks.

I'm surprised by people conflating customizability with maximalism. Yes, the default configuration is a bit too much but you can turn the knobs to reign it in. I work on multiple AWS environments, different application runtimes, and so on. Having some context in the prompt has been very helpful for me. I maybe biased though since I've used Starship for years paired with Nushell.

I have been using ZSH + various add-ons for ages, originally oh-my-zsh, and lately Prezto. I also somewhat maintain a fork of Prezto with improvements for Mac, mostly for my own personal use (although apparently quite a few others are using it as its gotten several stars). Historically I used powerline9k, powerlevel, powerline10k, and finally pure for the longest time. I switched to starship the last time it got posted on HN that I saw, which was around 2 or 3 years ago, and I've stuck with it since. For one thing, it had a mode to configure it exactly like pure very simply out of the box, and the second reason was because it was significantly faster. By moving more of the logic into starship and out of ZSH, it greatly reduced the performance hit I took by adding additional information into my prompt.

I know not everyone likes blinged out shells, but if you're a ZSH user, it fits very well into the Prezto/oh-my-zsh model.

Tried it. Not a fan. I find it unnecessarily fancy.

I've been using it for awhile and love it:

https://github.com/iloveitaly/dotfiles/blob/master/.config/s...

My personal favourite: PS1="%~ $ "

Too bad that we still use text based shells in the year 2025. We should have come up with a graphical shell that is as powerful and flexible two decades ago.

I love Starship. Having built a decent enough powerline prompt for zsh in the past, and really hating PS1, I've found Starship to be incredibly useful for building the exact prompt I want, with full colour, and never ever wigging out at anything. One simple toml file on every machine I ever ssh into and everything I need to know about the session is there at a glance.

With or without starship, one problem I have with zsh prompts is that when I press Enter, there is still a visible delay where for a fraction of a second, the cursor moves to the beginning of the next line.

This makes a nasty "flashing" effect.

If I keep Enter pressed, the cursor is permanently visible at offset 0 in the lowest line.

If the prompt is ultra-fast (e.g. plain root shell prompt on zsh), it happens less (e.g. only 50% of cases), but as soon as the prompt does anything, it's very visible.

I observe this with many terminals (gnome-terminal, wezterm, kitty, alacritty, xterm).

The only terminal I tried that doesn't have this problem is urxvt, where it looks perfect.

Video repro: https://nh2.me/flashing-cursors-on-newline.mp4

Why, and is there a way around it for those other terminals?

I started using Pure prompt since I'm only ever using zsh and it seemed to cut down a lot on the setup required, I do have to spend like 15-20 mins on a new computer to get everything working as expected but once it gets going, it feels like the best mix of customization and speed.

I have several use-cases / problems I solve with my prompt:

- See current git branch (to not mistakenly work or commit into the wrong branch)

- See git has changes (to stash them before switching branches)

- See the current language/engine version (like go v1.24.2, because i use tools like gvm, sdk, nvm or rustup to switch version in projects and i want feedback that i have the correct/expected language version enabled)

- See that i am on my local or a remote machine and k8s context

That's mostly it. Of course, I can do this by writing my own prompt, but I found out that Starship does this for me, basically out of the box, on any machine and terminal, in a very nice-looking way. Also, I am not a fan of fancy-looking prompts, so visually, Starship fits best for me.

I use Starship without any customizations and its good enough for my every day use.

I ended up writing my own zsh prompt a few years ago and it's worked like a charm for my simple needs: https://github.com/bbkane/dotfiles/blob/master/zsh/dot-zshrc...

ends up looking like this: https://github.com/bbkane/dotfiles/blob/master/zsh/README_im...

I'm a long time user of https://github.com/ohmybash/oh-my-bash

It would be nice to have a comparison and reasons to change from popular tools.

Can't find the URL again for a funny (and probably universal) custom prompt: you had to do some

    curl <url> | sh

then you could see on your terminal thousands of various tests related to your installation, then several megabytes being downloaded with progress bars, etc.

At the very end of the whole process, the whole stuff would vanish into writing PS1="$ " at the end of your ~/.bashrc

Of course, the very same prompt was used whatever your install could be. I think it was some joke making fun of all these crazy and heavy custom prompts all around.

I've been coding for 20 years, I very much like having git info in the prompt. Even if it doesn't tell me everything (and it often doesn't) it _is_ a reminder that I have uncommitted changes, or haven't pushed yet, or a stash that I might have forgotten about.

I played with Starship for an hour this morning - the joys of 50 person planning meetings - but ultimately uninstalled it. I did like some of its options like command timing and success/error, but all the tool versions ultimately just felt like noise. Not worth the effort to maintain a complex custom config to trim it down to what I'd want.

I'm senior, been working in the industry for closing on 25 years now. I usually avoid anything "ohh shiny".

For most of my career I used a very simple PS1:

    export PS1="\[\033[1;32m\][\t \u@\h \w]\\$\[\033[0m\] "

timestamp, who I am, what box I'm on, where I am.

I've tried prompts in the past, and they mostly annoyed me, or never showed me useful information. I've been a happy starship user for several years now. I've got the config tweaked so that it only shows me things I specifically care about. It's lightning fast.

I think we can generalize this into the overall computing environment. When I was younger, I was that kid building my whole OS from source via Gentoo, with all the CPU-specific flags and optimizations. I had a very detailed window manager configuration (fwvm2 maybe?), a .bashrc full of aliases and functions for every occasion. And yes, a custom prompt.

I think these kinds of over-optimization rabbit holes are a good learning experience, but I compare it to woodworking. A woodworker just starting out will spend most of his/her time building or refining the tools they need, learning techniques, coming up with ideas/designs and testing them, etc. But eventually the point comes where you have to get Real Work done and the tools and jigs have to wait until the weekend.

Linux is still my favorite desktop OS, but these days I just run Debian and KDE because "free time" is not a thing I have anymore and I care more about getting things done than having the most optimal computing experience.

As a counterpoint, one of the most useful customizations I've made to my prompt is to emit the exit status of the prior command. Knowing that something failed is a useful signal, esp. when sometimes the thing failing just fails to emit any output that indicates that it failed.

I only emit it if the prior command fails, too, so it doesn't clutter things the 90% of the time things are working.

  » true
  » false
  (last command returned 1.)
  » 

I also translate signals, so I get "last command exited on SIGSEGV", or so.

It's also useful the other way: when a program emits and error and exits with "success".

> Personally, over time, I have stopped caring too much about prompt customization.

For a while, I tried a couple of Christmas tree prompts which included all kinds of condensed Git status and other bells and whistles, but eventually tired of them and settled on:

- Exit status of the previous command, if nonzero.

- Current time, HH:MM, 24 hour format.

- user@host, red if euid 0, green otherwise.

- Current directory, shortened if the path has three or more elements, with home directory recognition.

- Current directory, full path, echoed as hardstatus and hence appearing in the terminal window title.

- The name of the current branch if within a Git repo.

- Prompt character, dollar/hash sign.

All those elements are meaningful to me, inasmuch as I can quickly orient myself using that information and explore further if I notice anything out of the ordinary.

I'm pretty sure that megaprompt programs like Starship could produce the above, but I like obtaining a familiar prompt with a minimum of external dependencies, and so have written it all in Bash, then ported to Zsh and various Korn shells, which was quite tricky. It probably wouldn't work on Xenix 286, but anything newer has a fighting chance.

I’m “very senior” (as in decades of _Unix_ use senior) and I like it in minimal mode because it’s just so much less hassle than all the other zsh stuff I had been using for a couple of decades. Not sure if you expected replies to be full of all the JavaScript kids that use emojis in logging messages, but apologies if so :)

I'm senior, been working in the industry for closing on 25 years now, majority of that dealing with *nix systems of various descriptions. I usually avoid anything "ohh shiny".

I've tried prompts in the past, and they mostly annoyed me, or never showed me useful information. I've been a happy starship user for several years now. I've got the config tweaked so that it only shows me things I specifically care about. It's lightning fast.

26 years with Linux. I use starship but primarily because I administer multiple kubernetes clusters and having the kube context staring me in the face is critical. I don't adjust the default config more than just making sure the kube bits are enabled.

That said my vimrc is 2 lines that i can configure manually, I don't touch bash config from Debian defaults and my fish config is vanilla save for a handful of functions because I'm a lazy. My ssh config is pretty heavily customized but mostly around what keys/usernames to default to for which hosts (see previous about lazy).

This is me. All I need to know is my current directory, and the status in color of my last command (red for failed, green for zero [my prompt starts with ->]). That's it.

It also gives me the current branch in a directory that has git, just so I'm sure of what I'm working on-- but most of the time that's handled by whatever editor I'm using.

For most of my nearly 40 years in work I had PS1='$ ' and PS2='> '.

A few years ago I progressed to having the current directory in there.

The thought of running a child process to create my prompt every time I hit enter doesn't feel right.

I hope to not age out of trying out new tools other people like!

Starship was the first time I meaningfully changed my shell prompt in nearly 30 years.