Change the output format of zsh's time

This is fairly close:

$ TIMEFMT=$'\nreal\t%E\nuser\t%U\nsys\t%S'

$ time sleep 1

real    1.01s
user    0.00s
sys     0.00s

Another option is to disable the builtin command and use the time binary provided by your operating system. I have the following in my .zshrc:

disable -r time       # disable shell reserved word
alias time='time -p ' # -p for POSIX output

This way time outputs to STDERR.

Just a small precision regarding Dennis Williamson's very useful answer (the "fairly close" part): bash's built-in time outputs to stderr, while zsh's outputs to stdout.

This command can illustrate the difference: time (echo abc) 2>/dev/null

In bash, it outputs:

    $ time (echo abc) 2>/dev/null
    abc

In zsh, with the suggested TIMEFMT variable:

    $ time (echo abc) 2>/dev/null
    abc

    real    0.00s
    user    0.00s
    sys     0.00s