Lolcat shell logo

Displays a logo with your username in rainbow colours every time you open a new terminal window.

Compatibility

Should work with Bash and Zsh on MacOS / Linux.

Requirements

• Bash or Zsh
• Lolcat

Installation

1. Download and install Lolcat, which will be handling the colouring of the logo.

2. Download the .asciilogo file and place it in your home directory.

Press Command + Shift + . (MacOS) or Control + Shift + h (Ubuntu) to display hidden dot files on your system.

3. Open your existing shell configuration ~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc (Linux) or ~/.bash_profile (MacOS) in a code/text editor and place the following functions somewhere before the end of your configuration:

function displayLine () {
  echo $1 | sed -e "s+{{username}}+@$USER+g"
}

function printLogo () {
  local logo=$1
  if [ -e "$logo" ]; then
    echo ""
    while IFS= read -r line; do
      displayLine $line
    done < $logo
    echo ""
  fi
}

4. Place the following line at the end of your shell configuration where you want the logo to be printed:

printLogo ~/.asciilogo | lolcat

If you decided to put the logo somewhere else, replace the ~/.asciilogo with the location and name of your logo.

5. Save and restart your terminal

You should now see a colourful 🌈 logo with your username printed on the side every time you start a new session.

For further customisations such as animations and colour spreads, see the Lolcat repository on GitHub.

Text replacements

If you want the logo to display other dynamic content, you can expand the displayLine function by piping more SEDs in a row and adding more {{stuff}} to your logo:

echo $1 | sed -e "s+{{username}}+@$USER+g" | sed -e "s+{{something}}+@$REPLACEMENT+g"

Note that $USER is a global variable and prints out your current username. The $REPLACEMENT in this example would contain whatever you want the {{something}} to be replaced with:

$REPLACEMENT=Content you want to display

These extra variables should be placed somewhere at the beginning of your configuration file.

Links

• ASCII Generator

License