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:
- Oh my Zsh
- Theme:
Agnoster
(built-in)
- Theme:
- iTerm2
- Theme: Solarized Dark
- Powerline
- Font: Menlo for Powerline
- Symbol font: iTerm2’s built-in Powerline glyphs
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 optionMinimal
)Appearance
→Tab bar location
(select optionTop
)Appearance
→Status bar location
(select optionTop
)Profiles
→Session
→Status bar enabled
- Press
Configure Status Bar
to customize the bar
- Press
Wrap-up
I love Oh My Zsh
+ Powerline
. Check it out, and you might love it too.