How can I change my bash prompt to show my working directory?

Question

I can print my current working dir like this

myPrompt$ pwd
/Users/me/myDir

I want my shell to look like this

/Users/me/myDir$ pwd
/Users/me/myDir

Is that possible? How can I do it?

Solution 1

You can use escape sequences in prompt variables.

Put this in your ~/.bashrc:

PS1='\w\$ '

Solution 2

Here's a one-liner for OSX. It appends the prompt you want into the profile file and then reloads the profile.

echo "PS1='\w\$ '" >> ~/.bash_profile; source ~/.bash_profile

On El Capitan you'll want to use

echo "PS1='\w\$ '" >> ~/.profile; source ~/.profile

Solution 3

For some reason '\w\$' didn't work for me but instead I did: export PS1="$(pwd) \$" and it worked.

Solution 4

Looks like an old thread but the steps below worked for me on OS X 10.9.5

• put PS1='\w\$ ' in ~/.profile
• if you made any changes in ~/.bashrc remove them
• close the terminal with cmd+q
• reopen the terminal

View more solutions

Comments

[Admin]

On OS X the name of the file is .bash_profile not just .profile. That will autoload for you.

[terdon]

Not quite. OSX starts login shells by default and that means that bash looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable. In any case, this is really a comment and not an answer so I am converting it to one.

[tir38]

If you came here looking for a way to do the opposite (i.e. stop showing working directory) you'll want PS1='\$ '

[bernie2436]

thanks. I made that change. Now I see: Abrams-MacBook-Air-3:tmp abramhandler$ pwd; /Users/abramhandler/tmp Abrams-MacBook-Air-3:tmp abramhandler$ .... I want to only show the part that says "tmp" for my prompt. How do I hide the rest? I want to hide the "abramhandler" and "Abram's-MacBook-Air-3" parts

[terdon]

@akh2103 use \W instead of \w. See the link Gilles gave you for a (short) explanation of the escape codes.

[bernie2436]

@terdon I see the same thing with \W and \w. I am running Unix on OSX.

[terdon]

@akh2103 if you are running OSX and using the terminal app, you should make changes to ~/.profile not .bashrc since terminal runs a login shell by default. You should also source ~/.profile or open a new terminal for the changes to take effect. Also, please edit to add more information, I can't understand what you are asking for from your last comment.

[bernie2436]

@terdon when I run source ~/.profile it changes the path properly in the current terminal. But when I open a new terminal then I still see "abram's mac book air" etc. I tried adding source ~/.profile to both the .profile and .bashrc files but still no luck. Any ideas?

[terdon]

@akh2103 on OSX? Weird, that sounds like ~/.profile is not being read so I guess ~/.bashrc is instead. I don't use OSX but apparently, the default terminal app launches login shells and ignores ~/.bashrc. If you have a ~.bash_profile edit that instead. Feel free to @ ping me in chat if it still does not work.

[victor]

In my case the complete PATH is really big so I have added one more flag for next line like PS1='\w\n\$ '

[Stephen Kitt]

That won’t work too well when you change directories...

[Martin Konrad]

I think the OP was intending to simply display the shell's working directory. As a regular Git user I'm also using some fancy Git-aware prompt but that seems to be overkill here.

[Vivek]

echo "PS1='\u:\w\$ '" >> ~/.bash_profile; source ~/.bash_profile to show prompt with username