Install Starship: The Minimal, Blazing-Fast Shell Prompt

Your default shell prompt is… let’s be honest — boring. It shows almost nothing useful and forces you to constantly type git status just to know what’s going on.

Starship fixes that.

It’s a modern, blazing-fast shell prompt written in Rust. Lightweight, context-aware, and smart enough to show you exactly what you need — git status, language versions, command duration — only when it matters. 🚀

Once you use it, going back to the default prompt feels… ancient.

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Why Starship?

Here’s why Starship deserves to be your daily driver:

• ⚡ Fast — Written in Rust, barely any latency
• 🧩 Cross-shell — Bash, Zsh, Fish, PowerShell, you name it
• 🎯 Smart defaults — Looks great right after install
• 🛠 Highly customizable — Everything lives in one starship.toml

💡 Starship only shows information when it’s relevant. Enter a Node project? Node version appears. Leave it? Gone. Clean and focused.

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Installation

Prerequisites: Nerd Fonts (Important)

To get icons and symbols working properly, you must use a Nerd Font.

Recommended choices:

• JetBrainsMono Nerd Font (popular and clean)
• FiraCode Nerd Font (great ligatures)
• Hack Nerd Font
• UbuntuMono Nerd Font

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Installing Nerd Fonts

On Linux

# Create fonts directory (if it doesn't exist)
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fonts

# Copy font files
cp *.ttf ~/.local/share/fonts/

# Refresh font cache
fc-cache -fv

🔥 Tip: Fully restart your terminal after installing fonts — opening a new tab is not enough.

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On Windows (WSL Users)

Since WSL relies on Windows for rendering, fonts must be installed on Windows itself.

Quick steps:

1. Extract the zip file
2. Select all .ttf files
3. Right-click → Install or Install for all users

Or simply drag & drop them into:

C:\Windows\Fonts

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Configure Windows Terminal (WSL)

1. Open Windows Terminal
2. Press Ctrl + , to open Settings
3. Select your WSL profile (e.g., Ubuntu)
4. Go to Appearance
5. Set Font face to your Nerd Font
6. Save

Or edit settings.json directly:

{
  "profiles": {
    "list": [
      {
        "name": "Ubuntu",
        "font": {
          "face": "UbuntuMono Nerd Font"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

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Configure VSCode Terminal

VSCode has its own terminal font settings.

Add this to your settings.json:

{
  "terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "UbuntuMono Nerd Font"
}

⚠️ Restart the VSCode terminal for changes to apply.

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Install Starship

The easiest way on Linux:

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

Or via package managers:

# Arch Linux
pacman -S starship

# Fedora
dnf install starship

# Homebrew (Linux/macOS)
brew install starship

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Shell Integration

Enable Starship by adding the init script to your shell config.

Bash (~/.bashrc)

eval "$(starship init bash)"

Zsh (~/.zshrc)

eval "$(starship init zsh)"

Fish

starship init fish | source

Apply changes without restarting:

source ~/.bashrc  # or ~/.zshrc

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Basic Configuration

Starship is configured using:

~/.config/starship.toml

Create it if it doesn’t exist:

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

---

Minimal & Clean Setup

add_newline = false

format = """
$directory$git_branch$git_status$character
"""

[directory]
truncation_length = 3
truncate_to_repo = true

[git_branch]
symbol = " "
style = "bold purple"

[git_status]
style = "bold red"

[character]
success_symbol = "[➜](bold green)"
error_symbol = "[✗](bold red)"

✨ Perfect if you like a minimal but informative prompt.

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Auto-Detect Language Versions

Starship automatically detects your project type.

[nodejs]
symbol = " "

[python]
symbol = " "

[rust]
symbol = " "

[golang]
symbol = " "

Enter a Node project → Node version appears. Same for Python, Rust, Go, and more.

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Useful Modules (Highly Recommended)

⏱ Command Duration

Shows how long your last command took:

[cmd_duration]
min_time = 500
format = "took [$duration](bold yellow) "

---

🕒 Time

[time]
disabled = false
format = "[$time](dimmed white) "
time_format = "%H:%M"

💡 Handy when working long hours in the terminal.

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🐳 Custom Commands (Docker Example)

[custom.docker]
command = "docker ps -q | wc -l"
when = "command -v docker"
symbol = "🐳 "
format = "[$symbol$output containers]($style) "

🔥 You can use this for Kubernetes context, VPN status, battery level, and more.

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Presets (Zero Configuration)

List available presets:

starship preset --list

Apply a preset:

starship preset nerd-font-symbols -o ~/.config/starship.toml

Popular presets:

• nerd-font-symbols — Full icon experience
• plain-text-symbols — No icons
• no-nerd-font — Safe everywhere

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Pro Tips 🔥

1. Run starship explain to understand each module
2. Use starship timings to detect slow modules
3. Disable modules with disabled = true
4. Less is more — too many modules = noisy prompt
5. Store your config in a dotfiles repo for easy sync

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My Go-To Config

A balanced setup: clean, informative, not cluttered.

add_newline = true

format = """
$directory\
$git_branch\
$git_status\
$nodejs\
$python\
$rust\
$cmd_duration\
$line_break\
$character
"""

[directory]
style = "bold cyan"
truncation_length = 4

[git_branch]
symbol = " "
style = "bold purple"

[git_status]
format = '([$all_status$ahead_behind]($style) )'
style = "bold red"

[cmd_duration]
min_time = 1000
format = "[$duration](bold yellow) "

[character]
success_symbol = "[❯](bold green)"
error_symbol = "[❯](bold red)"

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🎉 Done. Your terminal is now fast, informative, and actually enjoyable to use.

No more running git status every five seconds. Once you go Starship, there’s no going back ✨