How to Delete the User and the Machine Name in the Command Prompt

For Linux users (or Macs) using Terminal, you will see that the default prompt will have the format [username @ hostname ~] $. For instance,, on a Dell laptop, bash prompt will display [damien @ damien-dell ~] $, in which 'damien' is the author's username and 'damien-dell' is the server name. Please note that this is only the default setting and you can freely change, as well as show everything you want or even delete the information completely.

The following steps will show you how to do that.

1. In File manager, press Ctrl + H to display hidden files.

2. Open the '.bashrc' file in the text editor.

3. Find the line starting with PS1 =. The complete line must look like the following:

 PS1='[u@h W]$ ' 

Where u represents the user name, h is the host name and W is the location in the file structure.

4. To delete the username and server name from the prompt, simply delete the u @ h section, ie the above line will look like this:

 PS1='[W]$ ' 

5. For those who love pure minimalism, you can delete everything and leave only a prompt:

 PS1='$ ' 

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