Liquid Prompt gives you a nicely displayed prompt with useful information when you need it. It shows you what you need when you need it. You will notice what changes when it changes, saving time and frustration. You can even use it with your favorite shell – Bash or zsh.
If there is nothing special about the current context, the appearance of Liquid Prompt is similar to that of a default prompt:
[user:~] $
If you are running a background command and are also in the "myb" branch of a Git repository on a server:
1r [user@server:~/liquidprompt] myb ±
When Liquid Prompt is displaying everything (a rare event!), it may look like this:
code 🕤 ⌁24% ⌂42% 3d/2&/1z [user@server:~/ … /code/liquidprompt][pyenv]↥ master(+10/-5,3)*+ 125 ±
Here is an overview of what Liquid Prompt is capable of displaying:
- a tag associated to the current shell session (you can easily add any
prefix tag to your prompt by invoking
prompt_tag MYTAG
) - the current time, displayed as either numeric values or as an analog clock
- the current battery status:
- a green
⏚
if charging, above the given threshold, but not charged - a yellow
⏚
if charging and under the given threshold - a yellow
⌁
if discharging but above the given threshold - a red
⌁
if discharging and under the given threshold
- a green
- the remaining battery power if it is under the given threshold, displayed with an increasingly red color map as remaining power decreases
- the average of the processors load if it is over a given limit, displayed with an intensity color map as load increases
- the average temperature of the available system sensors (generally CPU and MB)
- the number of detached sessions (
screen
ortmux
) - the number of attached sleeping jobs (when you interrupt a command with Ctrl-Z
and bring it back with
fg
) - the number of attached running jobs (commands started with a
&
) - a pair of square brackets, in blue if your current shell is running in a
terminal multiplexer (
screen
ortmux
) - the current user, in bold yellow if it is root and in light white if it is not the same as the login user
- a green
@
if the connection has X11 support; a yellow one if not - the current host – in bold red if you are connected via a
telnet
connection and blue (or other unique colors) if connected via SSH - a green colon if the user has write permissions in the current directory and a red one if not
- the current directory in bold, shortened if it takes too much space while always preserving the first two directory names
- the current Python virtual environment
- an up arrow if an HTTP proxy is in use
- the name of the current branch if you are in a version control repository
(Git, Mercurial, Subversion, Bazaar, or Fossil):
- in green if everything is up-to-date
- in red if there are changes
- in yellow if there are pending commits to push
- the number of added/deleted lines if changes have been made and the number of pending commits
- a yellow
+
if there are stashed modifications - a red
*
if there are untracked files in the repository - the runtime of the last command, if it has exceeded a certain threshold
- the error code of the last command, if it has failed in some way
- a smart mark at the end of the prompt:
±
for Git,☿
for Mercurial,‡
for Subversion,‡±
for Git-Subversion,⌘
for Fossil,$
or%
for a simple user, in red if you havesudo
rights,- a red
#
for the root user.
- if desired, the prompt will be replicated in your terminal window's title (without the colors)
You can temporarily deactivate Liquid Prompt and revert to your previous prompt
by typing prompt_off
. Use prompt_on
to bring it back. You can disable
all prompts and simply use a single mark sign ($
for user and #
for root)
by using the prompt_OFF
command.
Installation is simple. The basic dependencies are standard Unix utilities/commands. If you experience some problems during the installation, please check that they are met; see the dependencies section for what you need specifically.
Follow these steps:
cd
git clone https://github.com/nojhan/liquidprompt.git
source liquidprompt/liquidprompt
To use it every time you start a shell, add the following lines to your
.bashrc
(if you use Bash) or .zshrc
(if you use zsh):
# Only load Liquid Prompt in interactive shells, not from a script or from scp
[[ $- = *i* ]] && source ~/liquidprompt/liquidprompt
Next up is the configuration; you can skip this step if you like the defaults:
cp ~/liquidprompt/liquidpromptrc-dist ~/.config/liquidpromptrc
You can also copy the file to ~/.liquidpromptrc
.
Use your favorite text editor to change the defaults.
The liquidpromptrc
file is richly commented and easy to set your own defaults.
You can even theme Liquid Prompt and use a custom PS1 prompt. This is explained
in the sections below.
Check in your .bashrc
that the PROMPT_COMMAND
variable is not set, or else
the prompt will not be available.
To install via antigen, simply add the following line in your .zshrc
after activating antigen:
antigen bundle nojhan/liquidprompt
Apart from obvious ones, some features depend on specific commands. If you do not install them, the corresponding feature will not be available, but no error will be displayed.
- Battery status requires
acpi
on GNU/Linux. - Temperature status requires
acpi
orlm-sensors
on GNU/Linux. - Detached session status looks for
screen
and/ortmux
. - VCS support features require
git
,hg
,svn
,bzr
orfossil
, but you probably already knew that.
For other features, the script uses commands that should be available on a large
variety of Unix systems: tput
, grep
, awk
, sed
, ps
, who
, and expr
.
You can configure some variables in the ~/.config/liquidpromptrc
file:
LP_BATTERY_THRESHOLD
, the maximal value under which the battery level is displayedLP_LOAD_THRESHOLD
, the minimal value after which the load average is displayedLP_TEMP_THRESHOLD
, the minimal value after which the average temperature is displayedLP_RUNTIME_THRESHOLD
, the minimal value after which the runtime is displayedLP_PATH_LENGTH
, the maximum percentage of the screen width used to display the pathLP_PATH_KEEP
, how many directories to keep at the beginning of a shortened pathLP_HOSTNAME_ALWAYS
, a choice between always displaying the hostname or showing it only when connected via a remote shellLP_USER_ALWAYS
, a choice between always displaying the user or showing it only when he is different from the one that logged in
You can also force some features to be disabled, to save some time in the prompt-building process:
LP_ENABLE_PERM
, if you want to detect if the directory is writeableLP_ENABLE_SHORTEN_PATH
, if you want to shorten the path displayLP_ENABLE_PROXY
, if you want to detect if a proxy is usedLP_ENABLE_JOBS
, if you want to have jobs informationLP_ENABLE_LOAD
, if you want to have load informationLP_ENABLE_BATT
, if you want to have battery informationLP_ENABLE_GIT
, if you want to have Git informationLP_ENABLE_SVN
, if you want to have Subversion informationLP_ENABLE_HG
, if you want to have Mercurial informationLP_ENABLE_BZR
, if you want to have Bazaar informationLP_ENABLE_FOSSIL
, if you want to have Fossil informationLP_ENABLE_VCS_ROOT
, if you want to show VCS informations with root accountLP_ENABLE_TITLE
, if you want to use the prompt as your terminal window's titleLP_ENABLE_SCREEN_TITLE
, if you want to use the prompt as your screen window's titleLP_ENABLE_SSH_COLORS
, if you want different colors for hosts you SSH intoLP_ENABLE_RUNTIME
, if you want to display the runtime of the last commandLP_ENABLE_SUDO
, if you want the prompt mark to change color while you have password-less root accessLP_ENABLE_FQDN
, if you want the display of the fully qualified domain nameLP_ENABLE_TIME
, if you want to display the time at which the prompt was shownLP_TIME_ANALOG
, if you want to show the time using an analog clock instead of numeric values
Note that if required commands are not installed, enabling the corresponding
feature will have no effect. Also, all the LP_ENABLE_…
variables override the
templates; i.e. if you use $LP_BATT
in your template and you set LP_ENABLE_BATT=0
in your configuration file, your prompt will not have any battery information.
If you are using Bash and want to use the PROMPT_DIRTRIM
built-in
functionality to shorten but still want to have Liquid Prompt calculating the
number of directories to keep in the path, precise a value for PROMPT_DIRTRIM
before sourcing Liquid Prompt and it will override this value with one fitting
the width of your terminal.
You may face performances decrease when using VCS located in remote directories.
To avoid this, you can set the LP_DISABLED_VCS_PATH
variable to a list of
absolute colon-separated paths where VCS-related features should be disabled.
You can prefix the LP_PS1
variable with anything you want using
LP_PS1_PREFIX
. The following example activate a custom window's title:
LP_PS1_PREFIX="\[\e]0;\u@\h: \w\a\]"
To postfix the prompt, use the LP_PS1_POSTFIX
variable. For example, to add a
newline and a single character:
LP_PS1_POSTFIX="\n>"
Note: the prompt_tag
function is a convenient way to add a prefix. You can use
it to add a keyword to each of your different terminals:
[:~/code/liquidprompt] develop ± prompt_tag mycode
mycode [:~/code/liquidprompt] develop ±
You can sort what you want to see by sourcing your favorite template file
(*.ps1
) in the configuration file.
You can start from the liquid.ps1
file, which show the default settings.
To use your own configuration, just set LP_PS1_FILE
to your own file path in
your ~/.liquidpromptrc
and you're done.
Those scripts basically export the LP_PS1
variable, by appending features and
theme colors.
Available features:
LP_BATT
batteryLP_LOAD
loadLP_TEMP
temperatureLP_JOBS
detachedscreen
ortmux
sessions/running jobs/suspended jobsLP_USER
userLP_HOST
hostnameLP_PERM
a colon (:
)LP_PWD
current working directoryLP_PROXY
HTTP proxyLP_VCS
informations concerning the current working repositoryLP_ERR
last error codeLP_MARK
prompt markLP_TITLE
the prompt as a window's title escaped sequences- LP_TTYN the terminal basename
LP_BRACKET_OPEN
andLP_BRACKET_CLOSE
, brackets enclosing the user+path part
For example, if you just want to have a prompt displaying the user and the host, with a normal full path in blue and Git support only:
export LP_PS1=`echo -ne "[\${LP_USER}\${LP_HOST}:\${BLUE}\$(pwd)\${NO_COL}] \${LP_GIT} \\\$ "`
Note that you need to properly escape dollar signs in a string that will be interpreted by Bash at each prompt.
To erase your new formatting, just bind LP_PS1
to a null string:
export LP_PS1=""
You can change the colors and special characters of some parts of Liquid Prompt
by sourcing your favorite theme file (*.theme
) in the configuration file. See
liquid.theme
for an example of the default Liquid Prompt theme.
The available colours available for use are:
BOLD
, BLACK
, BOLD_GRAY
, WHITE
, BOLD_WHITE
, GREEN
, BOLD_GREEN
,
YELLOW
, BOLD_YELLOW
, BLUE
, BOLD_BLUE
, PINK
, CYAN
, BOLD_CYAN,
,
RED
, BOLD_RED
, WARN_RED
, CRIT_RED
, DANGER_RED
, and NO_COL
.
Set the variable to a null string (""
) if you do not want color.
- Current working directory
LP_COLOR_PATH
as normal userLP_COLOR_PATH_ROOT
as root
- Color of the proxy mark
LP_COLOR_PROXY
- Jobs count
LP_COLOR_JOB_D
Detached (screen
/tmux
sessions without attached clients)LP_COLOR_JOB_R
Running (xterm &
)LP_COLOR_JOB_Z
Sleeping (Ctrl-Z)LP_COLOR_IN_MULTIPLEXER
currently running in a terminal multiplexer
- Last error code
LP_COLOR_ERR
- Prompt mark
LP_COLOR_MARK
as userLP_COLOR_MARK_ROOT
as rootLP_COLOR_MARK_SUDO
when you didsudo
and your credentials are still cached (usesudo -K
to revoke them)LP_MARK_PREFIX="\n"
put the prompt on the second line
- Current user
LP_COLOR_USER_LOGGED
user who logged inLP_COLOR_USER_ALT
user but not the one who logged inLP_COLOR_USER_ROOT
root
- Hostname
LP_COLOR_HOST
local hostLP_COLOR_SSH
connected via SSHLP_COLOR_TELNET
connected viatelnet
LP_COLOR_X11_ON
connected with X11 supportLP_COLOR_X11_OFF
connected without X11 support
- Separation mark (by default, the colon before the path)
LP_COLOR_WRITE
have write permissionLP_COLOR_NOWRITE
do not have write permission
- VCS
LP_COLOR_UP
repository is up-to-date / a push has been madeLP_COLOR_COMMITS
some commits have not been pushedLP_COLOR_CHANGES
there are some changes to commitLP_COLOR_DIFF
number of lines or files impacted by current changes
- Battery
LP_COLOR_CHARGING_ABOVE
charging and above thresholdLP_COLOR_CHARGING_UNDER
charging but under thresholdLP_COLOR_DISCHARGING_ABOVE
discharging but above thresholdLP_COLOR_DISCHARGING_UNDER
discharging and under threshold
LP_MARK_DEFAULT
(default: "") the mark you want at the end of your prompt (leave empty to use your shell's default mark)LP_MARK_BATTERY
(default: "⌁") in front of the battery chargeLP_MARK_ADAPTER
(default: "⏚") displayed when plugged-inLP_MARK_LOAD
(default: "⌂") in front of the loadLP_MARK_PROXY
(default: "↥") indicate a proxy in useLP_MARK_HG
(default: "☿") prompt mark in Mercurial repositoriesLP_MARK_SVN
(default: "‡") prompt mark in Subversion repositoriesLP_MARK_GIT
(default: "±") prompt mark in Git repositoriesLP_MARK_FOSSIL
(default: "⌘") prompt mark in Fossil repositoriesLP_MARK_BZR
(default: "⚯") prompt mark in Bazaar repositoriesLP_MARK_DISABLED
(default: "⌀") prompt mark in disabled repositories (seeLP_DISABLED_VCS_PATH
)LP_MARK_UNTRACKED
(default: "*") if Git has untracked filesLP_MARK_STASH
(default: "+") if Git has stashed modificationsLP_MARK_BRACKET_OPEN
(default: "[") marks around the main part of the promptLP_MARK_BRACKET_CLOSE
(default: "]") marks around the main part of the promptLP_MARK_PERM
(default: ":") colored green red or green to indicate write permissions of the current directoryLP_TITLE_OPEN
(default: "\e]0;") escape character opening a window's titleLP_TITLE_CLOSE
(default: "\a") escape character closing a window's title
Liquid Prompt is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3.
- Does not display the number of commits to be pushed in Mercurial repositories.
- Browsing very large Subversion repositories may dramatically slow down
the display of Liquid Prompt (use
LP_DISABLED_VCS_PATH
to avoid that). - Subversion repositories cannot display commits to be pushed because that's not how Subversion works
- The proxy detection only uses the
$http_proxy
environment variable. - The window's title escape sequence may not work properly on some terminals
(like
xterm-256
). - The analog clock requires a Unicode-aware terminal and at least a
sufficiently complete font on your system. The Symbola
font, designed by Georges Douros, is known to work well. On Debian or Ubuntu
install try the
fonts-symbola
orttf-ancient-fonts
package.
And many contributors!