Can I change the input color of my Bash prompt to something different than the terminal default? [closed]

Question

My default terminal color is gray, and that's fine.

My Bash prompt displays a bunch of colors, and this works fine:

PS1="${COLOR_RED}\u${COLOR_WHITE}@${COLOR_RED}${COMPUTERNAME} ${COLOR_BLUE}\w${GITPROMPT} ${COLOR_RESET}"

But the text I type in, at the end of the prompt, is gray. I want it to be white (ANSI code "[37m").

If I add a COLOR_WHITE at the end of the prompt, instead of the COLOR_RESET, then the default terminal color changes to white until it is reset. This makes a weird effect of some gray text, with some white text bleeding through at the top.

How can I change the "input text" color of the Bash prompt, to something other than the terminal default color?

Pycnometer

Might found useful How to change the output color of echo in Linux and Bash Prompt Generator. – Shaum

Answer 1

Simply add the following line:

export PS1=" \[\033[34m\]\u@\h \[\033[33m\]\w\[\033[31m\]\[\033[00m\] $ "

Preview:

These are my preferred colors. You can customize each part of the prompt's color by changing m codes (e.g., 34m) which are ANSI color codes.

List of ANSI color codes:

• Black: 30m
• Red: 31m
• Green: 32m
• Yellow: 33m
• Blue: 34m
• Purple: 35m
• Cyan: 36m
• White: 37m

Sickness

Answer 2

Try this one. It is simpler:

export PS1="\e[0;32m\t \e[32;1m\u@\h:\e[0;36m\w\e[0m$ "

Ashly

This doesn't seem to do anything when I add it to my bash_profile – Middleoftheroad

What shell are you using? (echo $SHELL). This only works for bash. Also you can try typing it directly on the command line. – Ashly

Answer 3

I would suggest changing your terminal emulator's settings.

It appears you are using iTerm2 (if you are on iTerm, I suggest looking at iTerm2), so:

Settings → Profiles → Your Profile → Color. Under 'basic colors', adjust 'foreground'.

For just changing the color of the input text, in Z shell (zsh) you could use a

preexec () { echo -ne "\e[0m" }

Source 1

I have found a hack-ish way to try this with Bash:

Not natively, but it can be hacked up using the DEBUG trap. This code sets up preexec and precmd functions similar to zsh. The command line is passed as a single argument to preexec.

Here is a simplified version of the code to set up a precmd function that is executed before running each command.

preexec () { :; }
preexec_invoke_exec () {
    [ -n "$COMP_LINE" ] && return  # do nothing if completing
    local this_command=$(history 1 | sed -e "s/^[ ]*[0-9]*[ ]*//g");
    preexec "$this_command"
}

trap 'preexec_invoke_exec' DEBUG
This trick is due to Glyph Lefkowitz; thanks to [bcat] for locating the original author.

http://www.macosxhints.com/dlfiles/preexec.bash.txt

Source 2

Exposition

I understand that. However I'm trying to change the "input text" color to something different than the foreground. Probably not a way to do that, but figured i'd ask :) – Pycnometer

Answer 4

I found that in my installation of Debian 8 (Jessie) I already have this, but it is commented by default. It is

# uncomment for a colored prompt, if the terminal has the capability; turned
# off by default to not distract the user: the focus in a terminal window
# should be on the output of commands, not on the prompt
force_color_prompt=yes

if [ -n "$force_color_prompt" ]; then
    if [ -x /usr/bin/tput ] && tput setaf 1 >&/dev/null; then
        # We have color support; assume it's compliant with Ecma-48
        # (ISO/IEC-6429). (Lack of such support is extremely rare, and such
        # a case would tend to support setf rather than setaf.)
        color_prompt=yes
    else
        color_prompt=
    fi
fi

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '
else
    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$ '
fi
unset color_prompt force_color_prompt

I just uncommented the line that says force_color_prompt=yes.

If you didn't already have this in your .bashrc file then you can copy this and paste it in yours.

Taker