You can overcome the visual indicator (at least in zsh, not sure about bash): http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/547/make-my-zsh-prompt-show-mode-in-vi-mod

You can overcome the visual indicator (at least in zsh, not sure about bash): http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/547/make-my-zsh-prompt-show-mode-in-vi-mode http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/547/make-my-zsh-prom... I'm a recent convert. I don't like using control sequences for anything but screen management.