Beautify your terminal in Linux

September 27, 2024

Prerequisites

  • You need the Kitty terminal (optional actually), you can check the Kitty docs for how to install it in your device here.

  • Check your shell by writing this command in your terminal:

    echo $0

    or

    echo $SHELL

Download and install Nerd fonts

Download and install Nerd Fonts in your terminal. Here's how you install fonts in Kitty:

  1. Unzip the file.
  2. Move your .ttf files to ~/.local/share/fonts (create this directory if it doesn’t exist).
  3. Type fc-cache -f -v to refresh the font cache.
  4. Open Kitty's configuration file: 
    nano ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf
    or use VSCode if you prefer: 
    code ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf
  5. Add the following line to set the fonts (for example, if you're using MesloLGS NF) 
    font_family MesloLGS NF

Install Starship Prompt

After setting up the fonts and terminal, the next step is to install the Starship prompt.

  1. Install Starship by running the following command:

    curl -sS https://starship.rs/install.sh | sh

  2. Add the following line to your shell configuration file depending on the shell you use:

    • For Bash, add this to ~/.bashrc:
    eval "$(starship init bash)"
    • For Zsh, add this to ~/.zshrc:
    eval "$(starship init zsh)"

  3. Restart your terminal or source the configuration file:

    source ~/.bashrc  # For Bash
source ~/.zshrc   # For Zsh

Customize Starship Configuration

Starship’s configuration is stored in a file located at ~/.config/starship.toml. Here's how you can create and modify it:

  1. Create the configuration file:

    mkdir -p ~/.config && touch ~/.config/starship.toml

  2. Open the file in an editor like Nano or VSCode:

    nano ~/.config/starship.toml

    or

    code ~/.config/starship.toml

  3. Add some basic configurations. For example:

    [prompt]
# Change the prompt symbol
symbol = "❯"
 
[character]
success_symbol = "[✔](bold green)"
error_symbol = "[✘](bold red)"
 
[battery]
# Display battery status only when charging or discharging
display = "auto"

Test Your Terminal

Now that everything is set up, open a new terminal window and check the new prompt, fonts, and symbols.

If you want to further tweak the appearance, explore more advanced Starship configurations in the official Starship documentation.

also if you are lazy to tweak by yourself there is a preset that starship already create here

The Config im using

First you need to install the catpuccin-mocha theme for kitty here

then type this command starship preset gruvbox-rainbow -o ~/.config/starship.toml

and last copy this config and paste it to your starship.toml to apply it