My configuration of iTerm with ZSH + Prezto

After a long time restoring backups from previous laptops I decided to go with a fresh install which made me look for a lot of things I had already configured to my needs so I decided to write this as a cheatsheet/reminder for myself but also share it here for anyone to use it.

This is a step by step guide on how to install iTerm, PREZTO and my current config of them.

Install iTerm and zsh

Install iTerm using Homebrew

$ brew cask install iterm2

Install zsh and zsh-completions using Homebrew

$ brew install zsh zsh-completions

Go to iTerm > Preferences > Profiles > General. Under Command, select “Command” (rather than “Login Shell”) and enter /bin/zsh --login

As a visual thing I always like to change the theme to Solarized Dark which you can do from the Preferences menu under Profiles > Color

You will start seeing some amazing features by default such as your current branch and different symbols depending if you have new or modified files.

Install Prezto

Prezto installs on top of zsh

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto.git "${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zprezto"

Create a ~/.zshrc file

setopt EXTENDED_GLOB
for rcfile in "${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}"/.zprezto/runcoms/^README.md(.N); do
  ln -s "$rcfile" "${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.${rcfile:t}"
done

Enable modules to Prezto

Edit ~/.zpreztorc file and add all the modules you want. It is VERY important to know that the order in which the modules are loaded matter so for example prompt must go last with history-substring-search right before it and then syntax-highligting.

This is how my modules piece of the file looks like:

# Set the Prezto modules to load (browse modules).
# The order matters.
zstyle ':prezto:load' pmodule \
  'environment' \
  'terminal' \
  'editor' \
  'history' \
  'directory' \
  'spectrum' \
  'utility' \
  'completion' \
  'git' \
  'syntax-highlighting' \
  'history-substring-search' \
  'prompt'

• completion add tabs completion for lots of commands.
• directory has shortcuts for fast navigation such as using 2 to show the directory stack or a numer 1 ... 9 to go immediately to that directory.
• syntax-highlighting highlights builtins, commands and functions in blue and show red when a command is wrong or incomplete.
• history-substring-search works together with history and allows you to do a search.

There are a lot more modules that you can enable/disable. Check the README files of each one of them.