Pure
Pretty, minimal and fast ZSH prompt
Sindre's open source work is supported by the community
Special thanks to:Botpress is an open-source conversational assistant creation platform.
They welcome contributions from anyone, whether you're into machine learning,
want to get started in open-source, or just have an improvement idea.
Overview
Most prompts are cluttered, ugly and slow. I wanted something visually pleasing that stayed out of my way.
Why?
- Comes with the perfect prompt character. Author went through the whole Unicode range to find it.
- Shows
git
branch and whether it's dirty (with a*
). - Indicates when you have unpushed/unpulled
git
commits with up/down arrows. (Check is done asynchronously!) - Prompt character turns red if the last command didn't exit with
0
. - Command execution time will be displayed if it exceeds the set threshold.
- Username and host only displayed when in an SSH session.
- Shows the current path in the title and the current folder & command when a process is running.
- Support VI-mode indication by reverse prompt symbol (Zsh 5.3+).
- Makes an excellent starting point for your own custom prompt.
Install
Can be installed with npm
or manually. Requires Git 2.0.0+ and ZSH 5.2+. Older versions of ZSH are known to work, but they are not recommended.
npm
$ npm install --global pure-prompt
That's it. Skip to Getting started.
Manually
- Clone this repo somewhere. Here we'll use
$HOME/.zsh/pure
. - Add the path of the cloned repo to
$fpath
in$HOME/.zshrc
.
mkdir -p "$HOME/.zsh"
git clone https://github.com/sindresorhus/pure.git "$HOME/.zsh/pure"
fpath+=("$HOME/.zsh/pure")
Getting started
Initialize the prompt system (if not so already) and choose pure
:
# .zshrc
autoload -U promptinit; promptinit
prompt pure
Options
Option | Description | Default value |
---|---|---|
PURE_CMD_MAX_EXEC_TIME |
The max execution time of a process before its run time is shown when it exits. | 5 seconds |
PURE_GIT_PULL=0 |
Prevents Pure from checking whether the current Git remote has been updated. | |
PURE_GIT_UNTRACKED_DIRTY=0 |
Do not include untracked files in dirtiness check. Mostly useful on large repos (like WebKit). | |
PURE_GIT_DELAY_DIRTY_CHECK |
Time in seconds to delay git dirty checking when git status takes > 5 seconds. |
1800 seconds |
PURE_PROMPT_SYMBOL |
Defines the prompt symbol. | ❯ |
PURE_PROMPT_VICMD_SYMBOL |
Defines the prompt symbol used when the vicmd keymap is active (VI-mode). |
❮ |
PURE_GIT_DOWN_ARROW |
Defines the git down arrow symbol. | ⇣ |
PURE_GIT_UP_ARROW |
Defines the git up arrow symbol. | ⇡ |
Colors
As explained in ZSH's manual, color values can be:
- A decimal integer corresponding to the color index of your terminal. If your
$TERM
isxterm-256color
, see this chart. - The name of one of the following nine colors:
black
,red
,green
,yellow
,blue
,magenta
,cyan
,white
, anddefault
(the terminal’s default foreground) #
followed by an RGB triplet in hexadecimal format, for example#424242
. Only if your terminal supports 24-bit colors (true color) or when thezsh/nearcolor
module is loaded.
Colors can be changed by using zstyle
with a pattern of the form :prompt:pure:$color_name
and style color
. The color names, their default, and what part they affect are:
execution_time
(yellow) - The execution time of the last command when exceedingPURE_CMD_MAX_EXEC_TIME
.git:arrow
(cyan) - ForPURE_GIT_UP_ARROW
andPURE_GIT_DOWN_ARROW
.git:branch
(242) - The name of the current branch when in a Git repository.git:branch:cached
(red) - The name of the current branch when the data isn't fresh.git:action
(242) - The current action in progress (cherry-pick, rebase, etc.) when in a Git repository.git:dirty
(218) - The asterisk showing the branch is dirty.host
(242) - The hostname when on a remote machine.path
(blue) - The current path, for example,PWD
.prompt:error
(red) - ThePURE_PROMPT_SYMBOL
when the previous command has failed.prompt:success
(magenta) - ThePURE_PROMPT_SYMBOL
when the previous command has succeded.prompt:continuation
(242) - The color for showing the state of the parser in the continuation prompt (PS2). It's the pink part in this screenshot, it appears in the same spot asvirtualenv
. You could for example matching both colors so that Pure has a uniform look.user
(242) - The username when on remote machine.user:root
(default) - The username when the user is root.virtualenv
(242) - The name of the Pythonvirtualenv
when in use.
The following diagram shows where each color is applied on the prompt:
┌───────────────────────────────────────────── path
│ ┌────────────────────────────────── git:branch
│ │ ┌─────────────────────────── git:action
| | | ┌─────────────────── git:dirty
│ │ │ │ ┌───────────────── git:arrow
│ │ │ │ │ ┌──────── host
│ │ │ │ │ │
~/dev/pure master|rebase-i* ⇡ zaphod@heartofgold 42s
venv ❯ │ │
│ │ │ └───── execution_time
│ │ └──────────────────────── user
│ └───────────────────────────────────────────────── prompt
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────── virtualenv (or prompt:continuation)
RGB colors
There are two ways to use RGB colors with the hexadecimal format. The correct way is to use a terminal that support 24-bit colors and enable this feature as explained in the terminal's documentation.
If you can't use such terminal, the module zsh/nearcolor
can be useful. It will map any hexadecimal color to the nearest color in the 88 or 256 color palettes of your termial, but without using the first 16 colors, since their values can be modified by the user. Keep in mind that when using this module you won't be able to display true RGB colors. It only allows you to specify colors in a more convenient way. The following is an example on how to use this module:
# .zshrc
zmodload zsh/nearcolor
zstyle :prompt:pure:path color '#FF0000'
Example
# .zshrc
autoload -U promptinit; promptinit
# optionally define some options
PURE_CMD_MAX_EXEC_TIME=10
# change the path color
zstyle :prompt:pure:path color white
# change the color for both `prompt:success` and `prompt:error`
zstyle ':prompt:pure:prompt:*' color cyan
prompt pure
Tips
In the screenshot you see Pure running in Hyper with the hyper-snazzy theme and Menlo font.
The Tomorrow Night Eighties theme with the Droid Sans Mono font (15pt) is also a nice combination.
Just make sure you have anti-aliasing enabled in your terminal.
To have commands colorized as seen in the screenshot, install zsh-syntax-highlighting.
Integration
oh-my-zsh
- Set
ZSH_THEME=""
in your.zshrc
to disable oh-my-zsh themes. - Follow the Pure Install instructions.
- Do not enable the following (incompatible) plugins:
vi-mode
,virtualenv
.
NOTE: oh-my-zsh
overrides the prompt so Pure must be activated after source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh
.
prezto
Pure is bundled with Prezto. No need to install it.
Add prompt pure
to your ~/.zpreztorc
.
zim
Add zmodule sindresorhus/pure --source async.zsh --source pure.zsh
to your .zimrc
and run zimfw install
.
antigen
Update your .zshrc
file with the following two lines (order matters). Do not use the antigen theme
function.
antigen bundle mafredri/zsh-async
antigen bundle sindresorhus/pure
antibody
Update your .zshrc
file with the following two lines (order matters):
antibody bundle mafredri/zsh-async
antibody bundle sindresorhus/pure
zplug
Update your .zshrc
file with the following two lines:
zplug mafredri/zsh-async, from:github
zplug sindresorhus/pure, use:pure.zsh, from:github, as:theme
zplugin
Update your .zshrc
file with the following two lines (order matters):
zplugin ice pick"async.zsh" src"pure.zsh"
zplugin light sindresorhus/pure
FAQ
There are currently no FAQs.
See FAQ Archive for previous FAQs.
Ports
- ZSH
- therealklanni/purity - More compact current working directory, important details on the main prompt line, and extra Git indicators.
- intelfx/pure - Solarized-friendly colors, highly verbose, and fully async Git integration.
- dfurnes/purer - Compact single-line prompt with built-in Vim-mode indicator.
- chabou/pure-now - Fork with Now support.
- pure10k - Configuration file for Powerlevel10k that makes it look like Pure.
- Bash
- sapegin/dotfiles - Prompt and color theme for Terminal.app.
- Fish
- brandonweiss/pure.fish - Pure-inspired prompt for Fish. Not intended to have feature parity.
- rafaelrinaldi/pure - Support for bare Fish and various framework (Oh-My-Fish, Fisherman, and Wahoo).
- Rust
- xcambar/purs - Pure-inspired prompt in Rust.
- Go
- talal/mimir - Pure-inspired prompt in Go with Kubernetes and OpenStack cloud support. Not intended to have feature parity.
- PowerShell
- nickcox/pure-pwsh - PowerShell/PS Core implementation of the Pure prompt.
Team
![]() |
![]() |
---|---|
Sindre Sorhus | Mathias Fredriksson |