How can I change the color of my prompt in zsh (different from normal text)?

Question

To recognize better the start and the end of output on a commandline, I want to change the color of my prompt, so that it is visibly different from the programs output. As I

Answer 1

Put this in ~/.zshrc:

autoload -U colors && colors
PS1="%{$fg[red]%}%n%{$reset_color%}@%{$fg[blue]%}%m %{$fg[yellow]%}%~ %{$reset_color%}%% "

Supported Colors:
red, blue, green, cyan, yellow, magenta, black, & white (from this answer) although different computers may have different valid options.

Surround color codes (and any other non-printable chars) with %{....%}. This is for the text wrapping to work correctly.

Additionally, here is how you can get this to work with the directory-trimming from here.

PS1="%{$fg[red]%}%n%{$reset_color%}@%{$fg[blue]%}%m %{$fg[yellow]%}%(5~|%-1~/.../%3~|%4~) %{$reset_color%}%% "