Tag: Windows Terminal

Changing your PowerShell Prompt

Ever had a PowerShell session when you are far down the folder path, and the prompt is so long it gets hard to see what commands and response you have…like this…

If only you could change the prompt to be a lot shorter…well, you can easily \o/

The PowerShell prompt is determined by the built-in Prompt function. You can customize the prompt by creating your own Prompt function and saving it in your PowerShell profile.

This sounds complicated, but the Prompt function is not protected, so to change the prompt for the current session only, just execute the function code as shown below, or with your own custom version and voila!

To make your custom prompt more permanent you need to save this to your PowerShell Profile. This means saving the function to the Power_profile.ps1 file in the appropriate location. Depending on the scope there are several locations, but I’m staying simple and changing mine for just me on my machine! 😉

  • Locations for Current user, Current Host are:
    • Windows – $HOME\Documents\PowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
    • Linux – ~/.config/powershell/Microsoft.Powershell_profile.ps1
    • macOS – ~/.config/powershell/Microsoft.Powershell_profile.ps1

For full information on Profiles see about Profiles – PowerShell | Microsoft Learn).

Very Short Prompt

This prompt just shows the Drive letter no matter where you are in the folders

function prompt {(get-location).drive.name+"\...>"}

This looks like this…

Screenshot of the terminal

My Preferred Shorter Prompt

This shows the Drive letter, ‘…’ for any intermediate folders and then just the last folder name, so you know your end destination.

function prompt {"PS " + (get-location).drive.name+":\...\"+ $( ( get-item $pwd ).Name ) +">"}

and looks like this…

Screenshot of the terminal

Reset back to the Default

Use this to set everything back to the original 🙂

function prompt {
    $(if (Test-Path variable:/PSDebugContext) { '[DBG]: ' }
      else { '' }) + 'PS ' + $(Get-Location) +
        $(if ($NestedPromptLevel -ge 1) { '>>' }) + '> '
}

For full details see about Prompts – PowerShell | Microsoft Learn

Add Git Bash (or other) to Windows Terminal

Add Git Bash (or other) to Windows Terminal

This is my quick, 1 minute, method to add ‘Git for Windows’ bashto Windows Terminal. But you can use the same process for any other command line.

  1. Either use the shortcut CTRL+, or the menu to open the settings.json
  1. This will open the settings.json file in you default editor.
  2. Now generate a new GUID by either
    1. go to https://www.guidgenerator.com/online-guid-generator.aspx or
    2. Enter [guid]::NewGuid() into the PowerShell terminal window
  1. Add the following json to the bottom of the “Profile”:”List” section
,
{
  "guid": "{REPLACE THE GUID HERE WITH YOUR ONE}",
  "hidden": false,
  "name": "Git bash",
  "icon": "C:\\Program Files\\Git\\mingw64\\share\\git\\git-for-windows.ico",
  "commandline": "C:\\Program Files\\Git\\bin\\bash.exe",
  "colorScheme": "One Half Dark",
  "startingDirectory": "%USERPROFILE%"
}
  1. Remember to replace the GUID with the one you created earlier.
  2. Save the file and you should now see the option in the drop down.

If you want this to be your default terminal, then just add the GUID to the “defaultProfile” setting in the json file and save.

I used a simple colour scheme to distinguish this terminal from the other. I also changed the PowerShell one by adding

"colorScheme": "Campbell Powershell"

to that profile to bring back the good ol’ blue background 😉

This is just the tip of the iceberg. You can customise Windows Terminal to your hearts delight.

For more details see the full Windows Terminal docs here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/terminal/