7.8 KiB
Powerlevel10k
Powerlevel10k is a theme for ZSH. It's a backward-compatible fork of Powerlevel9k with lower latency and better prompt responsiveness.
If you like the looks of Powerlevel9k but feeling frustrated by its slow prompt,
simply replace your powerlevel9k theme with powerlevel10k and enjoy responsive
shell like it's 80's again!
Powerlevel10k uses the same configuration options as Powerlevel9k and produces the same results. It's simply faster. There is no catch.
Table of Contents
Installation and configuration
For installation and configuration instructions see Powerlevel9k. Everything in there applies to Powerlevel10k as well. Follow the official installation guide, make sure everything works and you like the way prompt looks. Then simply replace Powerlevel9k with Powerlevel10k. Once you restart zsh, your prompt will be faster. No configuration changes are needed.
Manual installation
git clone https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ~/powerlevel10k
echo 'source ~/powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k.zsh-theme' >>! ~/.zshrc
Make sure to disable your current theme.
Extra configuration
Powerlevel10k has a handful of configuration options that Powerlevel9k doesn't have. They
are still using the POWERLEVEL9K prefix though.
-
POWERLEVEL9K_VCS_MAX_SYNC_LATENCY_SECONDS (FLOAT) [default=0.05]If it takes longer than this to fetch git repo status, display the prompt with a greyed out vcs segment and fix it asynchronously when the results come it.
-
POWERLEVEL9K_VCS_BACKENDS (ARRAY) [default=(git)]The list of VCS backends to use. Supported values are
git,svnandhg. Note that adding anything other than git will make prompt slower even when your current directory isn't a repo. -
POWERLEVEL9K_GITSTATUS_DIR (STRING) [default=$POWERLEVEL9K_INSTALLATION_DIR/gitstatus]Directory with gitstatus plugin. By default uses a copy bundled with Powerlevel10k.
-
POWERLEVEL9K_DISABLE_GITSTATUS (STRING) [default="false"]If set to
"true", Powerlevel10k won't use its fast git backend and will fall back tovcs_infolike Powerlevel9k. -
POWERLEVEL9K_MAX_CACHE_SIZE (INT) [default=10000]The maximum number of elements that can be stored in the cache. When the cache grows over this limit, it gets cleared.
-
POWERLEVEL9K_VCS_MAX_INDEX_SIZE_DIRTY (INT) [default=-1]Don't scan for dirty files in git repos with more files in the index than this. Instead, show them with the "dirty" color (yellow by default) whether they are dirty or not. This makes git prompt much faster on huge repositories.
-
POWERLEVEL9K_EXPERIMENTAL_TIME_REALTIME (STRING) [default="false"]If set to
"true",timesegment will update every second, turning into a realtime clock.
Try it out
Try Powerlevel10k without making any changes to your setup. If you like it, see Installation and configuration for how to make a permanent switch.
For Powerlevel9k users
If you are currently using Powerlevel9k, you can try Powerlevel10k in a temporary zsh shell. The prompt will look exactly like what you are used to but it'll be faster.
git clone https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git /tmp/powerlevel10k
source /tmp/powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k.zsh-theme
When you are done playing, rm -rf /tmp/powerlevel10k and exit zsh.
For new users
git clone https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git /tmp/powerlevel10k
echo "
# Your prompt configuration goes here.
POWERLEVEL9K_PROMPT_ON_NEWLINE=true
POWERLEVEL9K_LEFT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(root_indicator dir_writable dir vcs)
POWERLEVEL9K_RIGHT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(status command_execution_time background_jobs time)
source /tmp/powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k.zsh-theme" >/tmp/powerlevel10k/.zshrc
ZDOTDIR=/tmp/powerlevel10k zsh
When you are done playing, rm -rf /tmp/powerlevel10k and exit zsh.
Docker playground
You can try Powerlevel10k in Docker (Linux only). Once you exit zsh, the image is deleted.
docker run -e LANG=C.UTF-8 -e LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 -e TERM=$TERM -it --rm ubuntu bash -c '
set -uex
apt update
apt install -y zsh git
cd
git clone https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git
echo "
# Your prompt configuration goes here.
POWERLEVEL9K_PROMPT_ON_NEWLINE=true
POWERLEVEL9K_LEFT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(root_indicator dir_writable dir vcs)
POWERLEVEL9K_RIGHT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(status command_execution_time background_jobs time)
source ~/powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k.zsh-theme" >~/.zshrc
cd powerlevel10k
zsh -i'
How fast is it?
Powerlevel10k renders prompt between 10 and 100 times faster than powerlevel9k.
Here are benchmark results obtained with zsh-prompt-benchmark on Intel i9-7900X running Ubuntu 18.04.
| Theme | / | ~/linux |
|---|---|---|
| powerlevel9k/master | 101 ms | 280 ms |
| powerlevel9k/next | 26 ms | 255 ms |
| powerlevel10k | 1 ms | 22 ms |
| naked zsh | 0.05 ms | 0.05 ms |
Columns define the current directory where the prompt was rendered.
/-- root directory, not a git repo.~/linux-- linux git repo with 60k files. It was checked out to an M.2 SSD.
powerlevel9k/master is the stable branch of powerlevel9k, the one that virtually everyone uses. powerlevel9k/next is the development branch for the next release.
Here's how the prompt looked like during benchmarking.
It was identical in Powerlevel10k and Powerlevel9k. Even though Powerlevel10k can dynamically switch to async prompts, it wasn't happening during the benchmark because latencies were low. Prompts with both themes were essentially synchronous, with every prompt having up-to-date git info (no greyed-out vcs/git segments).
Configuration that was used:
POWERLEVEL9K_LEFT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(dir_writable dir vcs)
POWERLEVEL9K_RIGHT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(status time)
POWERLEVEL9K_MODE=nerdfont-complete
POWERLEVEL9K_PROMPT_ON_NEWLINE=true
POWERLEVEL9K_ROOT_ICON=\\uF09C
POWERLEVEL9K_TIME_ICON=\\uF017
POWERLEVEL9K_TIME_BACKGROUND=magenta
POWERLEVEL9K_STATUS_OK_BACKGROUND=grey53
Powerlevel10k shows similar performance advantage over Powerlevel9k on Mac OS, FreeBSD, WSL, and Raspberry Pie.
What's the catch?
Really, there is no catch. It's literally the same prompt with the same flexibility configuration format as Powerlevel9k. But much faster.
If you really need to know, here's where Powerlevel10k differs from Powerlevel9k:
- Git prompt doesn't show tags and revisions. Open an issue if you need them.
- By default only git vcs backend is enabled. If you need svn and hg, you'll need to set
POWERLEVEL9K_VCS_BACKENDS. See Extra configuration. - Fewer configuration options can be changed after the theme is loaded. For example, if you decide to change background color of some segment in the middle of an interactive session, it may not work.
Known bugs
When a notification about an exiting job is displayed, prompt content doesn't get refreshed. In Powerlevel9k it does. This could be fixed but the fix will add non-trivial complexity and extra prompt latency.