My Oh My Zsh favorites

(last update at ) — 350 words

If you are a developer and haven’t heard of Oh My Zsh (from hereon: OMZ) yet, do 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: 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 already plenty of official documentation and blog posts with instructions on that very 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.

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