Setup your Mac terminal for screencasting

If you will be showing your command line, we suggest using a minimal prompt to reduce distractions. This example prompt works well for screencasting:

You can use this one by updating your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc with the following:

export PS1="\n\[\e[32m\]\W\n\[\e[m\]\[\e[34m\]\\$\[\e[m\]"

Note: If you’re on Mac and using Bash, you also need to add a ~/.bash_profile with this:

source $HOME/.bashrc

This tells Mac to load your ~/.bashrc when loading a terminal emulator.

Customize the Command Prompt in VS Code

Use custom ENV variables if you prefer to only customize the PS1 Bash/Zsh command prompt in the VS Code terminal without affecting your other custom terminal themes in other applications, such as iTerm2.

In VS Code, add a new property, terminal.integrated.env.osx, and a new variable that will run a value.

{
  "terminal.integrated.env.osx": {
    "VSC": "yes lol!"
  }
}

Open zsh resource file, ~/.zshrc and add a simple check at the end of the file to handle the case when the terminal is open in VS Code. Save and reload everything.

if [ "$VSC" = "yes lol!"], then
  PS1='\$ '
fi

This works in Bash with ~/.bashrc as well.

Now, the command prompt is now a $ sign in VS Code's terminal while keeping other custom terminal themes intact.