You can do something similar using the show-mode-in-prompt option: show-mode-in-prompt If set to `on', add a character to the beginning of the prompt ind

You can do something similar using the show-mode-in-prompt option: show-mode-in-prompt If set to `on', add a character to the beginning of the prompt indicating the editing mode: emacs (`@'), vi command (`:'), or vi insertion (`+'). The default value is `off'. Unfortunately it's currently hardcoded to only use the '+' and ':' chars, and to only display at the beginning of the prompt. Chet accepted a patch I submitted for custom indicators, and this will be coming in bash 4.4/readline 7.0: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.shells.bash.bugs/22580/focus=22613 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.shells.bash.bugs/22580/fo... I have patched versions of bash 4.3/readline 6.3 available on github (the bash page has gifs showing the functionality in action): https://github.com/calid/bash https://github.com/calid/bash https://github.com/calid/readline https://github.com/calid/readline Note that the '\m' escape hasn't been accepted into the mainline yet, so as of now the custom indicators will still only display at the beginning of the prompt in the new versions.