Hiding user input on terminal in Linux script

Solution 1:

Just supply -s to your read call like so:

$ read -s PASSWORD
$ echo $PASSWORD

Solution 2:

Update

In case you want to get fancy by outputting an * for each character they type, you can do something like this (using andreas' read -s solution):

unset password;
while IFS= read -r -s -n1 pass; do
  if [[ -z $pass ]]; then
     echo
     break
  else
     echo -n '*'
     password+=$pass
  fi
done

Without being fancy

echo "Please enter your username";
read username;

echo "Please enter your password";
stty -echo
read password;
stty echo

Solution 3:

for a solution that works without bash or certain features from read you can use stty to disable echo

stty_orig=$(stty -g)
stty -echo
read password
stty $stty_orig

Solution 4:

Here's a variation on @SiegeX's excellent *-printing solution for bash with support for backspace added; this allows the user to correct their entry with the backspace key (delete key on a Mac), as is typically supported by password prompts:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

password=''
while IFS= read -r -s -n1 char; do
  [[ -z $char ]] && { printf '\n'; break; } # ENTER pressed; output \n and break.
  if [[ $char == $'\x7f' ]]; then # backspace was pressed
      # Remove last char from output variable.
      [[ -n $password ]] && password=${password%?}
      # Erase '*' to the left.
      printf '\b \b' 
  else
    # Add typed char to output variable.
    password+=$char
    # Print '*' in its stead.
    printf '*'
  fi
done

Note:

As for why pressing backspace records character code 0x7f: "In modern systems, the backspace key is often mapped to the delete character (0x7f in ASCII or Unicode)" ^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace}
\b \b is needed to give the appearance of deleting the character to the left; just using \b moves the cursor to the left, but leaves the character intact (nondestructive backspace). By printing a space and moving back again, the character appears to have been erased (thanks, The "backspace" escape character '\b' in C, unexpected behavior?).

In a POSIX-only shell (e.g., sh on Debian and Ubuntu, where sh is dash), use the stty -echo approach (which is suboptimal, because it prints nothing), because the read builtin will not support the -s and -n options.

Solution 5:

A bit different from (but mostly like) @lesmana's answer

stty -echo
read password
stty echo

simply: hide echo do your stuff show echo