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?