Make OS X Terminal commands I type BOLD

Question

I'd like to make commands I've typed (input) into terminal stand out from all the output.

For example:

imac:~ buster$ chmod -R g-w myfolder
imac:~ buster$ cd myfolder
imac:myfolder buster$ ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 9 root admin 306 Apr 20 2010 bin
drwxr-xr-x 7 root admin 238 Apr 20 2010 include
drwxr-xr-x 73 root admin 2482 May 18 17:16 lib
drwxr-xr-x 6 root admin 204 Apr 20 2010 man
imac:myfolder buster$ echo Go Giants!
Go Giants!

bold jumps to mind but I'd accept a color or even highlighting the whole line...

I'm sure there's a way to do this but it's not obvious to me...

thanks!

Answer 1

Edit your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc (see Gilles' comment below) and add the following lines:

BOLD="\[\033[1m\]"
OFF="\[\033[m\]"
PS1="${OFF}\u@\h:\w \$${BOLD}"
PS2="> ${BOLD}"
trap 'echo -ne "${OFF}" > $(tty)' DEBUG

Move the ${BOLD} around to make part of the prompt also bold. If the prompt itself should not be colored, you need the ${OFF} prefix in PS1, otherwise empty lines (pressing enter without having something written) will make the following prompt bold (credits to @Jay, thanks again!)

This adds a debug trap to turn bold format off, so it's quite a hack. Credits (works without group tty on OS X though).

This is a bit of a hack, so use it at your own risk.

Only setting your PS1/PS2 prompts to bold would be easier and just as visible:

BOLD="\[\033[1m\]"
OFF="\[\033[m\]"
PS1="${BOLD}\u@\h:\w \$${OFF}"
PS2="${BOLD}>${OFF} "