My Oh My Zsh favorites

(last update at ) — 368 words

If you are a developer and haven’t heard of Oh My Zsh (from hereon: OMZ) yet, check it out!

Once a tool sort of forced on me at my first job, I have come to love OMZ as an alternative to Bash. For every developer, there is something like pleasant auto-completion, automatic loading of .env files (hello dotenv plugin! ❤️), extensive customizability, and more.

This is the command-line stack I use for development on macOS:

Additional links:

NB. I am not going to tell you how to install these bits of software. There are plenty of official documentation and blog posts with instructions on that topic.

Customizing iTerm2 look-and-feel

One of the best things about OMZ is that you can customize it at will. I’ve added several plugins, aliases, and other helpers to my stack. A developer’s setup is very personal; hence I’m not going into details here.

When it comes to iTerm2, however, it is easy to get lost in its extensive preference window. These are some places that I check when customizing my CLI’s visuals:

  • Appearance → Windows → Hide scrollbars
  • Appearance → Tabs → Show tab bar even where is only one tab
  • Appearance → Dimming
  • Profiles → Colors → Color Presets… → Import…
  • Profiles → Text → Use built-in Powerline glyphs
  • Profiles → Text → Font
  • Profiles → Terminal → Unlimited scrollback

(Obviously, the entire section Appearance is worth noting here but too big to list in full.)

Extra, if you like a fancy status bar on top of your screen, check this out:

  • Appearance → Theme (select option Minimal)
  • Appearance → Tab bar location (select option Top)
  • Appearance → Status bar location (select option Top)
  • Profiles → Session → Status bar enabled
    • Press Configure Status Bar to customize the bar

Wrap-up

I love Oh My Zsh + Powerline. Check it out, and you might love it too.