Introduction

Terminator is my personal choice for terminal as I can easily split multiple terminal in a single tab. However, this would also work with the default terminal for Kali Linux which is QTerminal.

1. Backup

First, create a backup of your .zshrc file

cp ~/.zshrc ~/.zshrc.bak

2. Setup

Edit the .zshrc file using nano.

nano ~/.zshrc

Navigate to the end of the file and add the following code:

# Print timestamp before every command output
preexec() {
    local ts=$(date "+[%Y/%m/%d %I:%M %p]")

    print -P "%F{green}${ts}%f %F{blue}${USER}@${HOST}%f:%F{green}${PWD}%f%F{blue}\$%f $1"
}

Feel free to customize the format to your liking.

3. Apply changes

Apply the changes using the command below:

source ~/.zshrc

4. Test

To test, execute any command. In this example, i used cat /etc/hosts.

┌──(kali㉿kali)-[~/Desktop]
└─$ cat /etc/hosts
[2025/12/02 11:09 PM] kali@kali:/home/kali/Desktop$ cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 kali
::1       localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
ff02::1   ip6-allnodes
ff02::2   ip6-allrouters

The output should now display a timestamp before each command, as shown in the image below. Terminal with date

Adding Timestamp on Kali Terminal

Introduction#

1. Backup##

2. Setup##

3. Apply changes##

4. Test##

Introduction

1. Backup

2. Setup

3. Apply changes

4. Test