How to hide computer name and user name in terminal command prompt

Solution 1:

Change your prompt in your ~/.bashrc file. The example you asked for would be:

export PS1="\W \$"

It would result in the current folder you're in being shown plus a $ for the regular prompt and a # if you're root. Check out this guide for more examples of what you could show in your prompt.

Edit:

As per one of the comments below, you might need to source your ~/.bashrc from your ~/.bash_profile or even put this code in your ~/.bash_profile instead. You can read this article for a better explanation on which file to use.

Solution 2:

I had a similar issue with this but did not get it working at first.

This may of been because I wasn't sudo but either way this works just as well.

1. Open the preferences in the terminal (top right)
2. Then go into the shell tab
3. Then copy/paste the command export PS1="\W \$"; clear;
4. Then restart the terminal and should work

Solution 3:

echo "export PS1='$ '" >> ~/.bash_profile
. ~/.bash_profile

This will leave just $ as a prompt. If you want to restore the old prompt, you will need to edit .bash_profile to remove that "export ..." line.

Solution 4:

Check out this tutorial on how to change your bash prompt. A very short version (only username and no current path): PS1="\u$ "

Result: myusername$ cat something.log

Solution 5:

Edit ~/.bash_profile to save your changes to prompt.

nano ~/.bash_profile

At the end, add your changes.

# Change prompt
export PS1="\W \$ "

Exit, save changes. Hit enter to confirm the file name. Run source to see the change.

source ~/.bash_profile