When you are working with some branch of a Git repository, you may want to show the name of the current branch in your terminal in order to avoid wrong whereabouts of your commits.

In this post, I will show how I use the following instructions to create my personal colored Terminal prompt along with some additional features regarding Git. These instructions are inspired by Cael Kay-Jackson. My working OS is macOS High Sierra.

The final output will look like the following:

First, we need to create a .bash_profile file and a .bashrc file under your home path if they do not exist already:

touch ~/.bash_profile
touch ~/.bashrc

Now, add the following instructions to your .bashrc to set a color scheme for your Terminal prompt.

if [ -n "$force_color_prompt" ]; then
	if [ -x /usr/bin/tput ] && tput setaf 1 >&/dev/null; then
		color_prompt=yes
	else
		color_prompt=
	fi
fi

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
	PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\] $'
else
	PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w $'
fi
unset color_prompt force_color_prompt

Then add the following instructions to your .bash_profile to display the Git branch name with red color:

if [ "${BASH-no}" != "no" ]; then
	[ -r ~/.bashrc ] && . ~/.bashrc
fi

# Git prompt with branch
export PS1="$PS1\[\033[31m\]\$(parse_git_branch)\[\033[00m\] "

Here since the $PS1 variable has already been exported by the .bashrc file, we need to append the branch information to it instead of exporting it again. The \[\033[31m\] part sets the \$(parse_git_branch) to red.

Finally, to make everything function, tap

source ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bash_profile

in your Terminal. You can play around with the $PS1 variable to make your own color scheme or prompt style.

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