Shortening my prompt in Zsh

Old question, I know, but as an alternative solution I just discovered powerlevel9k, an extension of agnoster (they appear practically identical bar a fair few tweaks), which has this functionality built in.

Just set it as your zsh theme, then in .zshrc set

POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_DIR_LENGTH=2

which ensures that only two directories are listed.

Alternate options are outlined in the readme.

First you would have to copy the theme into a different one in order to customize it to your liking.

• Copy agnoster.zsh-theme to e.g. mytheme.zsh-theme and select it in your .zshrc
• Then modify the theme to your liking

I looked at the agnoster theme and found a place where you could save space.

prompt_dir() {
    prompt_segment blue $CURRENT_FG ' %~ '
}

could be changed to

prompt_dir() {
    prompt_segment blue $CURRENT_FG ' %25<...<%~%<< '
}

This will truncate your path to 25 characters and replacing more with ... How this works is described in the zsh manual (linked below).

Short explanation is:

• %25<...< will truncate everything that is longer than 25 characters to ...
• %<< will basically tell zsh that anything after this should not be truncated (limiting the truncation to the path part)

I leave it to you to find more places where you can save space by.

And for more customization needs take a look at zsh: 13 Prompt Expansion