# Starship prompt

11 Hacker News commenters recommended Starship prompt and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend Starship as a fast, pleasant-to-use terminal prompt that works across development environments. Critics say it lacks some Oh My Zsh and powerlevel10k features, such as hiding empty segments.

## Why people recommend it

- Faster than Oh My Zsh (2 comments): "it's clearly faster than Oh My Zsh, but my issue was that I relied on some useful Oh My Zsh features that I didn't know how to replicate in Starship" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564299)) "Starship gives you the same "drop in and go" experience but without the 200ms+ prompt lag." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563131))
- Pleasant, improved user experience (2 comments): "I've had a really pleasant experience using Starship across development environments." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46568521)) "Using starship for the prompt provides many pretty UX improvements" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46572001))
- Responsive, low prompt lag (2 comments): "Starship gives you the same "drop in and go" experience but without the 200ms+ prompt lag." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563131)) "seems fine and responsive to me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48454706))

## What people warn about

- Missing Oh My Zsh features (3 comments): "it's clearly faster than Oh My Zsh, but my issue was that I relied on some useful Oh My Zsh features that I didn't know how to replicate in Starship" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564299)) "I tried making my own and the config TOML syntax isn't expressive enough to support hiding empty segments." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564416)) "It's missing really basic powerlevel10k features like empty segments." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563960))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [oh-my-posh](https://hackerapproved.com/p/oh-my-posh.md): 8 recommend
- [Whetuu](https://hackerapproved.com/p/whetuu.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Starship prompt", https://hackerapproved.com/p/starship-prompt/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).