How to remove computer name from prompt in Ubuntu terminal

Background

If you are using Ubuntu terminal you must have noticed that terminal prompt looks like below -

Notice that prompt looks like -

athakur@athakur-Inspiron-7572:~/Documents/code$

The problem is this is fairly large and with more folders inside the root directory, there is much less space to type actual commands. In this post, I will show how to fix this.

How to remove computer name from prompt in Ubuntu terminal

To fix this you need to edit ~/.bashrc file. In this file there is a variable called PS1 that governs how your command prompt looks like. If you open ~/.bashrc you should see something like below -

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

# If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir
case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*)
    PS1="\[\e]0;${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h: \w\a\]$PS1"
    ;;
*)
    ;;
esac

Let me explain a little bit about PS1 variable and above itself.

• debian_chroot: This is applicable if you are running chroot operation (Your root directory is different than the default one). If you do not know chroot then do not worry, this is just and empty variable and can be ignored for now. 
• XTERM: This is for a terminal emulator. If you are using XTERM PS1 under this would take effect.
• color_prompt: This would be the default case for most. Your terminal would support color prompt. So PS1 under "$color_prompt" = yes is something you need to edit. 

If you have not heard above, don't worry about it just change the PS1 variable under the color_propmt if statement.

• \u: expands to the current username
• \h: expands to the current hostname
• \w: expands to the current working directory
• \$: expands to # for root and $ for all other users

Now that you know what each means and once you have figured out which PS1 to change you can simply remove "@\h" from it.



So change

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then

    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '

to

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then

    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '

Once done save it, and run -

• source ~/.bashrc

or simply open a new terminal and you should see the change.

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