Prologue

Hey there! Well, as a loyal Windows user, it is a bit weired to mention Zsh. We have PowerShell, and we can have Bash with WSL. But Zsh? Why there is Zsh?

Well, I have to confess, I bought a MacBook, and for MacOS, the default shell is Zsh. To be honest, I hate MacOS as I can’t get used to its user interface. To make myself more confortable, I have to do extensive customization, but still it is no comparable to Windows. And as a developer, you just pay more attention to what you are more familiar with — the shell. With Mac’s key bindings, the experience is terrible, a nightmare, especially for a formal, and current, Windows player.

This is not a serious article, just for sharing my configuration of Zsh. I’ll talk about how to configure Zsh, including plugins, themes and key bindings. In addition, I’ll also share a pretty cool configuration for your terminal.

Hope you like it, enjoy!

Maybe I should mention that this post is intended for Mac users? Although you can have Zsh on other systems as well.

Shell Configuration

So, let’s talk about shell first. Before we start, I assume that you have basic knowledge about Bash.

The Missing Homebrew

I don’t know why Homebrew is not bundled. But you can simply install it via one command.

1	/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Oh My Zsh

Zsh is famous for its customizability. But customization leads to more complexity. Therefore, Oh My Zsh is here to help you manage the complexity. That is to say, it is a configuration manager for Zsh.

Zsh is the default shell doesn’t mean you don’t have Bash. You still have it on your system.

To install On My Zsh, just run one line of command. In Zsh, we have an equivalence for .bashrc — .zshrc. It will prompt to backup or update your .zshrc. If you have other configurations before, remember to transfer them.

1	sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://install.ohmyz.sh/)"

You can check the new .zshrc. It’s long, but you only need to pay attention to several keys. You may also add user configurations at the bottom of the file.

ZSH_THEME=...
plugins=(...)
# User configuration
...

Themes

Well, the first thing to configure is without doubt, the theme. For me, I choose agnoster, one of the most fancy ones.

In order to be fancy, some themes will use Powerline Font or a Nerd Font for special characters, so you should either install them, or enable the corresponding options in your terminal. Later I will mention how to enable Powerline Font in iTerm2.

Well, I failed to setup Powerline Font in the default Mac terminal.

Plugins

Following theme, some plugins can boost your productivity, and also make your terminal prettier. Here’s a list of plugins that I prefer. Too many plugins may not be a good option.

plugins=(
	zsh-syntax-highlighting
	zsh-autosuggestions
	zsh-shift-select
	git
)

zsh-syntax-highlighting: providing syntax highlighting for your commands

1	git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting

zsh-autosuggestions: enable inline history completion like PowerShell

1	git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

zsh-shift-select: allow you select text in commands like in Windows

1	git clone https://github.com/jirutka/zsh-shift-select.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-shift-select

Finally, git is a built-in plugin. It displays git status in the prompt.

Key Bindings

Now your Zsh is pretty, but is hard to use. You find yourself unable to move the cursor by word, and unable to delete characters by word, which is annoying. Here are three key bindings to help you.

1
2
3

bindkey '^H' backward-kill-word
bindkey "^[^[[D" forward-word
bindkey "^[^[[C" backward-word

Fun Commands

The configuration should end here. But due to my strong personal affection, I have to introduce my favorite commandline combo to you.

1	brew install cowsay fortune

Then, you can add these aliases to your .zshrc.

1 2	alias csay="fortune \| cowsay -n" alias cthink="fortune \| cowthink -n"

Now, you can have this lovely cow in your shell!

> csay
 _____________________________________
< Your code should be more efficient! >
 -------------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

Terminal Configuration

Well, your shell is pretty now, but still you feel something is missing. Well, you cannot start it via a shortcut! And the default terminal is a little shabby.

Here, as many others do, I recommend you iTerm2. It is fancier, and have a workaround for the shortcut issue.

Hotkey Window

In iTerm2, you can define hotkey window, which is activated by a custom hotkey. You can find it in Settings > Profiles.

But it does not completely solve the problem, as it requires iTerm2 to be in the background, i.e. unable to remove it from the Dock.

Profile

You can continue customize your terminal under Settings > Profiles. For me, I prefer “Tango Dark” theme.

If you selected a fancy Oh My Zsh theme which requires Powerline Font or Nerd Fonts, the simplest way is to check the “Use built-in” Powerline glyphs.