Powerlevel9k is a theme for ZSH which uses Powerline Fonts. It can be used with vanilla ZSH or ZSH frameworks such as Oh-My-Zsh, Prezto, Antigen, and many others.

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.

Powerlevel9k can be used to create both very useful and beautiful terminal environments:

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 vanilla terminal to a PL9k terminal. Once you are done, you can optionally customize your prompt.

Installation Instructions

1. Install the Powerlevel9k Theme
2. Install Powerline 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 root_indicator background_jobs history time)	Segment list for right prompt

The table above shows the default values, 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 root_indicator background_jobs history time)

Available Prompt Segments

The segments that are currently available are:

System Status Segments:

• background_jobs - Indicator for background jobs.
• battery - Current battery status.
• context - Your username and host, conditionalized based on $USER and SSH status.
• dir - Your current working directory.
• dir_writable - Displays a lock icon, if you do not have write permissions on the current folder.
• disk_usage - Disk usage of your current partition.
• history - The command number for the current line.
• ip - Shows the current IP address.
• public_ip - Shows your public IP address.
• load - Your machine's load averages.
• os_icon - Display a nice little icon, depending on your operating system.
• ram - Show free RAM.
• root_indicator - An indicator if the user has superuser status.
• status - The return code of the previous command.
• swap - Prints the current swap size.
• time - System time.
• vi_mode- Your prompt's Vi editing mode (NORMAL|INSERT).
• ssh - Indicates whether or not you are in an SSH session.

Development Environment Segments:

• vcs - Information about this git or hg repository (if you are in one).

Language Segments:

• GoLang Segments:
  • go_version - Show the current GO version.
• Javascript / Node.js Segments:
  • node_version - Show the version number of the installed Node.js.
  • nodeenv - nodeenv prompt for displaying node version and environment name.
  • nvm - Show the version of Node that is currently active, if it differs from the version used by NVM
• PHP Segments:
  • php_version - Show the current PHP version.
  • symfony2_tests - Show a ratio of test classes vs code classes for Symfony2.
  • symfony2_version - Show the current Symfony2 version, if you are in a Symfony2-Project dir.
• Python Segments:
  • virtualenv - Your Python VirtualEnv.
  • anaconda - Your active Anaconda environment.
  • pyenv - Your active python version as reported by the first word of pyenv version. Note that the segment is not displayed if that word is system i.e. the segment is inactive if you are using system python.
• Ruby Segments:
  • chruby - Ruby environment information using chruby (if one is active).
  • rbenv - Ruby environment information using rbenv (if one is active).
  • rspec_stats - Show a ratio of test classes vs code classes for RSpec.
• Rust Segments:
  • rust_version - Display the current rust version and logo.
• Swift Segments:
  • swift_version - Show the version number of the installed Swift.

Cloud Segments:

• AWS Segments:
  • aws - The current AWS profile, if active.
  • aws_eb_env - The current Elastic Beanstalk Environment.
• docker_machine - The current Docker Machine.

Other:

• custom_command - Create a custom segment to display the output of an arbitrary command.
• command_execution_time - Display the time the current command took to execute.
• todo - Shows the number of tasks in your todo.txt tasks file.
• detect_virt - Virtualization detection with systemd
• newline - Continues the prompt on a new line.

---

anaconda

This segment shows your active anaconda environment. It relies on either the CONDA_ENV_PATH or the CONDA_PREFIX (depending on the conda version) environment variable to be set which happens when you properly source activate an environment.

Special configuration variables:

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_ANACONDA_LEFT_DELIMITER	"("	The left delimiter just before the environment name.
POWERLEVEL9K_ANACONDA_RIGHT_DELIMITER	")"	The right delimiter just after the environment name.

Additionally the following segment specific parameters can be used to customize it: POWERLEVEL9K_PYTHON_ICON, POWERLEVEL9K_ANACONDA_BACKGROUND, and POWERLEVEL9K_ANACONDA_FOREGROUND.

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

background_jobs

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_BACKGROUND_JOBS_VERBOSE	true	If there is more than one background job, this segment will show the number of jobs. Set this to false to turn this feature off.

battery

The default settings for 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.
POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_VERBOSE	true	Display time remaining next to battery level.

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

You can also change the battery icon automatically depending on the battery level. This will override the default battery icon. In order to do this, you need to define the POWERLEVEL9k_BATTERY_STAGES variable.

| Variable | Default Value | Description | | POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_STAGES|Unset|A string or array, which each index indicates a charge level.|

Powerlevel9k will use each index of the string or array as a stage to indicate battery charge level, progressing from left to right. You can provide any number of stages. The setting below, for example, provides 8 stages for Powerlevel9k to use.

POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_STAGES="▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█"

If you require extra spacing after the icon, you will have to set it as an array, since spaces in the string will be used as one of the stages and you will get a missing icon. To do this, declare the variable as follows:

POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_STAGES=($'\u2581 ' $'\u2582 ' $'\u2583 ' $'\u2584 ' $'\u2585 ' $'\u2586 ' $'\u2587 ' $'\u2588 ')

Using the array syntax, you can create stages comprised of multiple characters. The below setting provides 40 battery stages.

POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_STAGES=(
   $'▏    ▏' $'▎    ▏' $'▍    ▏' $'▌    ▏' $'▋    ▏' $'▊    ▏' $'▉    ▏' $'█    ▏'
   $'█▏   ▏' $'█▎   ▏' $'█▍   ▏' $'█▌   ▏' $'█▋   ▏' $'█▊   ▏' $'█▉   ▏' $'██   ▏'
   $'██   ▏' $'██▎  ▏' $'██▍  ▏' $'██▌  ▏' $'██▋  ▏' $'██▊  ▏' $'██▉  ▏' $'███  ▏'
   $'███  ▏' $'███▎ ▏' $'███▍ ▏' $'███▌ ▏' $'███▋ ▏' $'███▊ ▏' $'███▉ ▏' $'████ ▏'
   $'████ ▏' $'████▎▏' $'████▍▏' $'████▌▏' $'████▋▏' $'████▊▏' $'████▉▏' $'█████▏' )

You can also change the background of the segment automatically depending on the battery level. This will override the following variables: POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_CHARGING, POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_CHARGED, POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_DISCONNECTED, and POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_LOW_COLOR. In order to do this, define a color array, from low to high, as shown below:

POWERLEVEL9K_BATTERY_LEVEL_BACKGROUND=(196 202 208 214 220 226 190 154 118 82 46)

As with the battery stages, you can use any number of colors and Powerlevel9k will automatically use all of them appropriately.

Some example settings: |Brightness|Possible Array| |Bright Colors|(196 202 208 214 220 226 190 154 118 82 46)| |Normal Colors|(124 130 136 142 148 112 76 40 34 28 22)| |Subdued Colors|( 88 94 100 106 70 34 28 22)|

command_execution_time

Display the time the previous command took to execute if the time is above POWERLEVEL9K_COMMAND_EXECUTION_TIME_THRESHOLD. The time is formatted to be "human readable", and so scales the units based on the length of execution time. If you want more precision, just set the POWERLEVEL9K_COMMAND_EXECUTION_TIME_PRECISION field.

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_COMMAND_EXECUTION_TIME_THRESHOLD	3	Threshold above which to print this segment. Can be set to 0 to always print.
POWERLEVEL9K_COMMAND_EXECUTION_TIME_PRECISION	2	Number of digits to use in the fractional part of the time value.

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. By default, it will only print if you are not your 'normal' user (including if you are root), or if you are SSH'd to a remote host.

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.

You can customize the context segment. For example, you can make it to print the full hostname by setting

POWERLEVEL9K_CONTEXT_TEMPLATE="%n@`hostname -f`"

You can set the POWERLEVEL9K_CONTEXT_HOST_DEPTH variable to change how the hostname is displayed. See (ZSH Manual)[http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Prompt-Expansion.html#Login-information] for details. The default is set to %m which will show the hostname up to the first ‘.’ You can set it to %{N}m where N is an integer to show that many segments of system hostname. Setting N to a negative integer will show that many segments from the end of the hostname.

Variable	Default Value	Description
DEFAULT_USER	None	Username to consider a "default context" (you can also set $USER).
POWERLEVEL9K_ALWAYS_SHOW_CONTEXT	false	Always show this segment, including $USER and hostname.
POWERLEVEL9K_ALWAYS_SHOW_USER	false	Always show the username, but conditionalize the hostname.
POWERLEVEL9K_CONTEXT_TEMPLATE	%n@%m	Default context prompt (username@machine). Refer to the ZSH Documentation for all possible expansions, including deeper host depths.

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. See the table below for more informations.
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.

Strategy Name	Description
Default	Truncate whole directories from left. How many is defined by POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_DIR_LENGTH
truncate_middle	Truncates the middle part of a folder. E.g. you are in a folder named "~/MySuperProjects/AwesomeFiles/BoringOffice", then it will truncated to "~/MyS..cts/Awe..les/BoringOffice", if POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_DIR_LENGTH=3 is also set (controls the amount of characters to be left).
truncate_from_right	Just leaves the beginning of a folder name untouched. E.g. your folders will be truncated like so: "/ro../Pr../office". How many characters will be untouched is controlled by POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_DIR_LENGTH.
truncate_with_package_name	Search for a package.json or composer.json and prints the name field to abbreviate the directory path. The precedence and/or files could be set by POWERLEVEL9K_DIR_PACKAGE_FILES=(package.json composer.json). If you have jq installed, it will dramatically improve the speed of this strategy.
truncate_with_folder_marker	Search for a file that is specified by POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_FOLDER_MARKER and truncate everything before that (if found, otherwise stop on $HOME and ROOT).

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.

The truncate_with_package_name strategy gives your directory path relative to the root of your project. For example, if you have a project inside $HOME/projects/my-project with a package.json that looks like:

{
  "name": "my-cool-project"
}

the path shown would be my-cool-project. If you navigate to $HOME/projects/my-project/src, then the path shown would be my-cool-project/src. Please note that this currently looks for .git directory to determine the root of the project.

If you want to customize the directory separator, you could set:

# Double quotes are important here!
POWERLEVEL9K_DIR_PATH_SEPARATOR="%F{red} $(print_icon 'LEFT_SUBSEGMENT_SEPARATOR') %F{black}"

To omit the first character (usually a slash that gets replaced if you set POWERLEVEL9K_DIR_PATH_SEPARATOR), you could set POWERLEVEL9K_DIR_OMIT_FIRST_CHARACTER=true.

You can also customize the leading tilde character when you are in $HOME using:

# Double quotes are important here!
POWERLEVEL9K_HOME_FOLDER_ABBREVIATION="%F{red} $(print_icon 'HOME_ICON') %F{black}"

disk_usage

The disk_usage segment will show the usage level of the partition that your current working directory resides in. It can be configured with the following variables.

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_DISK_USAGE_ONLY_WARNING	false	Hide the segment except when usage levels have hit warning or critical levels.
POWERLEVEL9K_DISK_USAGE_WARNING_LEVEL	90	The usage level that triggers a warning state.
POWERLEVEL9K_DISK_USAGE_CRITICAL_LEVEL	95	The usage level that triggers a critical state.

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.

public_ip

This segment will display your public IP address. There are several methods of obtaining this information and by default it will try all of them starting with the most efficient. You can also specify which method you would like it to use. The methods available are dig using opendns, curl, or wget. The host used for wget and curl is http://ident.me by default but can be set to another host if you prefer.

The public_ip segment will attempt to update your public IP address every 5 minutes by default(also configurable by the user). If you lose connection your cached IP address will be displayed until your timeout expires at which point every time your prompt is generated a new attempt will be made. Until an IP is successfully pulled the value of $POWERLEVEL9K_PUBLIC_IP_NONE will be displayed for this segment. If this value is empty(the default)and $POWERLEVEL9K_PUBLIC_IP_FILE is empty the segment will not be displayed.

Variable	Default Value	Description
POWERLEVEL9K_PUBLIC_IP_FILE	'/tmp/p8k_public_ip'	This is the file your public IP is cached in.
POWERLEVEL9K_PUBLIC_IP_HOST	'http://ident.me'	This is the default host to get your public IP.
POWERLEVEL9K_PUBLIC_IP_TIMEOUT	300	The amount of time in seconds between refreshing your cached IP.
POWERLEVEL9K_PUBLIC_IP_METHODS	(dig curl wget)	These methods in that order are used to refresh your IP.
POWERLEVEL9K_PUBLIC_IP_NONE	None	The string displayed when an IP was not obtained

newline

Puts a newline in your prompt so you can continue using segments on the next line. This allows you to use segments on both lines, unlike POWERLEVEL9K_PROMPT_ON_NEWLINE, which simply separates segments from the prompt itself.

This only works on the left side. On the right side it does nothing.

rbenv

This segment shows the version of Ruby being used when using rbenv to change your current Ruby stack.

It figures out the version being used by taking the output of the rbenv version-name command.

• If rbenv is not in $PATH, nothing will be shown.
• If the current Ruby version is the same as the global Ruby version, nothing will be shown.

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 not show the error code when the last command returned an error and optionally hide this segment when the last command completed successfully by setting POWERLEVEL9K_STATUS_OK_IN_NON_VERBOSE to false.
POWERLEVEL9K_STATUS_OK_IN_NON_VERBOSE	false	Set to true if you wish to show this segment when the last command completed successfully in non-verbose mode.
POWERLEVEL9K_STATUS_SHOW_PIPESTATUS	true	Set to true if you wish to show the exit status for all piped commands.

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.

symfony2_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.
POWERLEVEL9K_VCS_SHOW_SUBMODULE_DIRTY	true	Set to false to not reflect submodule status in the top-level repository prompt.
POWERLEVEL9K_VCS_HIDE_TAGS	false	Set to true to stop tags being displayed 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!

License

Project: MIT

Logo: CC-BY-SA. Source repository: https://github.com/bhilburn/powerlevel9k-logo