terminal - having “$” instead of MyComputer:~ me$

Question

Right now in my MacOS X terminal I have MyComputer:~ me$ before all the commands.

In some videos I saw they have just $ - that's much less clutter, how is it done?

Answer 1

This text is printed by your shell, and it's called a prompt.

Your shell is probably bash. The prompt is set in bash's initialisation file, which is .bashrc in your home directory. Specifically, the prompt is set by the PS1 variable. Its value can contain escape sequences that are replaced by some value when the prompt is displayed. For example, MyComputer:~ me$ results from a prompt setting like

PS1='\h:\w \u\$ '  # host name colon working directory space user name dollar space

Try adding the following line at the end of your .bashrc (create it if it doesn't exist):

PS1='\$ '

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If this doesn't change anything, it's because you have a login shell and no proper .bash_profile. See Difference between .bashrc and .bash_profile for an explanation. Short story: create a .bash_profile containing

if [ -r ~/.profile ]; then . ~/.profile; fi
case "$-" in *i*) if [ -r ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc; fi;; esac