powerlevel9k Theme for ZSH

Powerlevel9k is a theme for ZSH which uses Powerline Fonts. It can be used with vanilla ZSH, Oh-My-Zsh, or Prezto, and can also be installed using antigen.

Get more out of your terminal. Be a badass. Impress everyone in 'Screenshot Your Desktop' threads. Use powerlevel9k.

You can check out some other users' configurations in our wiki: Show Off Your Config.

There are a number of Powerline ZSH themes available, now. The developers of this theme focus on four primary goals:

1. Give users a great out-of-the-box configuration with no additional configuration required.
2. Make customization easy for users who do want to tweak their prompt.
3. Provide useful segments that you can enable to make your prompt even more effective and helpful. We have prompt segments for everything from unit test coverage to your AWS instance.
4. Optimize the code for execution speed as much as possible. A snappy terminal is a happy terminal.

Here is powerlevel9k in action, with some simple settings.

Table of Contents

1. Installation
2. Customization
   1. Stylizing Your Prompt
   2. Customizing Prompt Segments
   3. Available Prompt Segments
3. Troubleshooting

Be sure to also check out the Wiki!

Installation

There are two installation steps to go from a lame terminal to a "Power Level 9000" terminal. Once you are done, you can optionally customize your prompt.

Installation Instructions

1. Install the Powerlevel9k Theme
2. Install Powerline-Patched Fonts

No configuration is necessary post-installation if you like the default settings, but there are plenty of segment customization options available if you are interested.

Prompt Customization

Be sure to check out the wiki page on the additional prompt customization options, including color and icon settings: Stylizing Your Prompt

Customizing Prompt Segments

Customizing your prompt is easy! Select the segments you want to have displayed, and then assign them to either the left or right prompt by adding the following variables to your ~/.zshrc.

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_LEFT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS	(context dir rbenv vcs)	Segment list for left prompt
POWERLEVEL9K_RIGHT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS	(status history time)	Segment list for right prompt

So if you wanted to set these variables manually, you would put the following in your ~/.zshrc:

POWERLEVEL9K_LEFT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(context dir rbenv vcs)
POWERLEVEL9K_RIGHT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(status history time)

Available Prompt Segments

The segments that are currently available are:

• aws - The current AWS profile, if active.
• background_jobs - Indicator for background jobs.
• battery - Current battery status.
• context - Your username and host.
• custom_command - A custom command to display the output of.
• dir - Your current working directory.
• go_version - Show the current GO version.
• history - The command number for the current line.
• ip - Shows the current IP address.
• load - Your machines 5 minute load average.
• node_version - Show the version number of the installed Node.js.
• nvm - Show the version of Node that is currently active, if it differs from the version used by NVM
• os_icon - Display a nice little icon, depending on your operating system.
• php_version - Show the current PHP version.
• ram - Show free RAM and used Swap.
• rbenv - Ruby environment information (if one is active).
• root_indicator - An indicator if the user is root.
• rspec_stats - Show a ratio of test classes vs code classes for RSpec.
• rust_version - Display the current rust version.
• status - The return code of the previous command.
• symphony2_tests - Show a ratio of test classes vs code classes for Symfony2.
• symphony2_version - Show the current Symfony2 version, if you are in a Symfony2-Project dir.
• time - System time.
• todo - Shows the number of tasks in your todo.txt tasks file.
• vi_mode- Vi editing mode (NORMAL|INSERT).
• virtualenv - Your Python VirtualEnv.
• vcs - Information about this git or hg repository (if you are in one).

aws

If you would like to display the current AWS profile, add the aws segment to one of the prompts, and define AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE in your ~/.zshrc:

Variable	Default Value	Description
AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE	None	Your AWS profile name

battery

This segment will display your current battery status (fails gracefully on systems without a battery). It is supported on both OSX and Linux (note that it requires acpi on Linux).

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_CHARGING	"yellow"	Color to indicate a charging battery.
POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_CHARGED	"green"	Color to indicate a charged battery.
POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_DISCONNECTED	$DEFAULT_COLOR	Color to indicate absence of battery.
POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_LOW_THRESHOLD	10	Threshold to consider battery level critical.
POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_LOW_COLOR	"red"	Color to indicate critically low charge level.

Note that you can modify the _FOREGROUND color without affecting the icon color.

custom_command

The custom_... segment allows you to turn the output of a custom command into a prompt segment. As an example, if you wanted to create a custom segment to display your WiFi signal strength, you might define a custom segment called custom_wifi_signal like this:

POWERLEVEL9K_LEFT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(context time battery dir vcs virtualenv custom_wifi_signal)
POWERLEVEL9K_CUSTOM_WIFI_SIGNAL="echo signal: \$(nmcli device wifi | grep yes | awk '{print \$8}')"
POWERLEVEL9K_CUSTOM_WIFI_SIGNAL_BACKGROUND="blue"
POWERLEVEL9K_CUSTOM_WIFI_SIGNAL_FOREGROUND="yellow"

If you prefer, you can also define the function in your .zshrc rather than putting it in-line with the variable export, as shown above. Just don't forget to invoke your function from your segment! Example code that achieves the same result as the above:

zsh_wifi_signal(){
        local signal=$(nmcli device wifi | grep yes | awk '{print $8}')
        local color='%F{yellow}'
        [[ $signal -gt 75 ]] && color='%F{green}'
        [[ $signal -lt 50 ]] && color='%F{red}'
        echo -n "%{$color%}\uf230  $signal%{%f%}" # \uf230 is 
}

POWERLEVEL9K_CUSTOM_WIFI_SIGNAL="zsh_wifi_signal"
POWERLEVEL9K_LEFT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(context time battery dir vcs virtualenv custom_wifi_signal)

The command, above, gives you the wireless signal segment shown below:

You can define as many custom segments as you wish. If you think you have a segment that others would find useful, please consider upstreaming it to the main theme distribution so that everyone can use it!

context

The context segment (user@host string) is conditional. This lets you enable it, but only display it if you are not your normal user or on a remote host (basically, only print it when it's likely you need it).

To use this feature, make sure the context segment is enabled in your prompt elements (it is by default), and define a DEFAULT_USER in your ~/.zshrc:

Variable	Default Value	Description
DEFAULT_USER	None	Username to consider a "default context" (you can also use $USER)

dir

The dir segment shows the current working directory. When using the "Awesome Powerline" fonts, there are additional glyphs, as well:

Compatible	Powerline	Awesome Powerline	Situation
None	None		At the root of your home folder
None	None		Within a subfolder of your home directory
None	None		Outside of your home folder

To turn off these icons you could set these variables to an empty string.

POWERLEVEL9K_HOME_ICON=''
POWERLEVEL9K_HOME_SUB_ICON=''
POWERLEVEL9K_FOLDER_ICON=''

You can limit the output to a certain length by truncating long paths. Customizations available are:

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_DIR_LENGTH	2	If your shorten strategy, below, is entire directories, this field determines how many directories to leave at the end. If your shorten strategy is by character count, this field determines how many characters to allow per directory string.
POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_STRATEGY	None	How the directory strings should be truncated. By default, it will truncate whole directories. Other options are truncate_middle, which leaves the start and end of the directory strings, and truncate_from_right, which cuts starting from the end of the string.
POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_DELIMITER	..	Delimiter to use in truncated strings. This can be any string you choose, including an empty string if you wish to have no delimiter.

For example, if you wanted the truncation behavior of the fish shell, which truncates /usr/share/plasma to /u/s/plasma, you would use the following:

POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_DIR_LENGTH=1
POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_DELIMITER=""
POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_STRATEGY="truncate_from_right"

In each case you have to specify the length you want to shorten the directory to. So in some cases POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_DIR_LENGTH means characters, in others whole directories.

ip

This segment tries to examine all currently used network interfaces and prints the first address it finds. In the case that this is not the right NIC, you can specify the correct network interface by setting:

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_IP_INTERFACE	None	The NIC for which you wish to display the IP address. Example: eth0.

rspec_stats

See Unit Test Ratios, below.

status

This segment shows the return code of the last command.

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_STATUS_VERBOSE	true	Set to false if you wish to hide this segment when the last command completed successfully.

ram

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_RAM_ELEMENTS	Both	Specify ram_free or swap_used to only show one or the other rather than both.

symphony2_tests

See Unit Test Ratios, below.

time

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_TIME_FORMAT	'H:M:S'	ZSH time format to use in this segment.

As an example, if you wanted a reversed time format, you would use this:

# Reversed time format
POWERLEVEL9K_TIME_FORMAT='%D{%S:%M:%H}'

If you are using an "Awesome Powerline Font", you can add a time symbol to this segment, as well:

# Output time, date, and a symbol from the "Awesome Powerline Font" set
POWERLEVEL9K_TIME_FORMAT="%D{%H:%M:%S \uE868  %d.%m.%y}"

vcs

By default, the vcs segment will provide quite a bit of information. Further customization is provided via:

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_HIDE_BRANCH_ICON	false	Set to true to hide the branch icon from the segment.
POWERLEVEL9K_SHOW_CHANGESET	false	Set to true to display the hash / changeset in the segment.
POWERLEVEL9K_CHANGESET_HASH_LENGTH	12	How many characters of the hash / changeset to display in the segment.

vcs Symbols

The vcs segment uses various symbols to tell you the state of your repository. These symbols depend on your installed font and selected POWERLEVEL9K_MODE from the Installation section above.

Compatible	Powerline	Awesome Powerline	Explanation
↑4	↑4	4	Number of commits your repository is ahead of your remote branch
↓5	↓5	5	Number of commits your repository is behind of your remote branch
⍟3	⍟3	3	Number of stashes, here 3.
●	●		There are unstaged changes in your working copy
✚	✚		There are staged changes in your working copy
?	?		There are files in your working copy, that are unknown to your repository
→	→		The name of your branch differs from its tracking branch.
☿	☿		A mercurial bookmark is active.
@			Branch Icon
None	None	2c3705	The current commit hash. Here "2c3705"
None	None		Repository is a git repository
None	None		Repository is a Mercurial repository

vi_mode

This segment shows ZSH's current input mode. Note that this is only useful if you are using the ZSH Line Editor (VI mode). You can enable this either by .zshrc configuration or using a plugin, like Oh-My-Zsh's vi-mode plugin.

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_VI_INSERT_MODE_STRING	"INSERT"	String to display while in 'Insert' mode.
POWERLEVEL9K_VI_COMMAND_MODE_STRING	"NORMAL"	String to display while in 'Command' mode.

Unit Test Ratios

The symfony2_tests and rspec_stats segments both show a ratio of "real" classes vs test classes in your source code. This is just a very simple ratio, and does not show your code coverage or any sophisticated stats. All this does is count your source files and test files, and calculate the ratio between them. Just enough to give you a quick overview about the test situation of the project you are dealing with.

tl; dr

Want to just get a quick start? Check out the Show Off Your Config portion of the wiki to get going.

The Wiki also has a ton of other useful information!