Setting up and Customizing Windows Terminal Part II

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In the previous article, I had talked about customizing Windows Terminal as well as VS Code integrated terminal using Oh My Posh and Terminal Icons. However, I have found Oh My Posh to be very slow at times and may be somewhat fancier than I'd like.

After searching for some more options for customizations, I stumbled on Starship. It's fast, minimal, and highly customizable.

Install for Windows #

You'll need Scoop to install Starship for Windows. You can install Scoop with following commands:

Invoke-Expression (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://get.scoop.sh')

Or use the shorter version

iwr -useb get.scoop.sh | iex

Note: if you get an error you might need to change the execution policy (i.e. enable Powershell) with

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -scope CurrentUser

Finally install Starship using Scoop:

scoop install starship

And add following lines in your PowerShell profile configuration file to activate Starship.

Invoke-Expression (&starship init powershell)
You can find PowerShell configuration in $HOME\Documents\PowerShell\. You can simply start the profile configuration file for editing in VS Code from terminal with the below command 
code .$PROFILE

Install for Linux/WSL #

Use below command to install Starship using prebuilt binaries:

curl -fsSL https://starship.rs/install.sh | bash

Add following to your .bashrc file

eval "$(starship init bash)"

Custom Theme #

Starship can be customized as you wish using a TOML configuration file. Details on how to customize each module can be found in the official documentation.

The configuration file must be stored in $HOME\.config\starship.toml for Windows and in ~/.config/starship.toml for Linux.

I have been using the following configuration:

# Don't print a new line at the start of the prompt
add_newline = true

# Wait 10 milliseconds for starship to check files under the current directory.
scan_timeout = 10

# Use custom format
format = """$cmd_duration

$OS$time$directory$git_branch$git_commit$git_state$git_status
[❯❯❯](bold green) """

# Show how much time it took for last command if it is more than 500ms
[cmd_duration]
min_time = 1000
format = "took [$duration](bold yellow)"

# Local Time
[time]
disabled = false
format = '[\[$time\]](#E95420)'
time_format = "%T"

[directory]
format = '[ $path ](#E95420)'

# Git Stuff
[git_branch]
format = '[\[$branch\]]($style)'
truncation_length = 16
truncation_symbol = ""
[git_status]
format = '( [$all_status$ahead_behind]($style))'
style = ""
untracked = "[?$count](#FF8C00) "
stashed = "[X$count](red) "
modified = "[M$count](#DC143C) "
staged = "[+$count](green) "
renamed = "[~$count](#FFD700) "
deleted = "[-$count](red) "

[env_var]
variable = "SHELL"
default = "unknown shell"

Which results in following prompt:

Starship Custom Prompt