Beautify your terminal

A simple guide to beautify your (zsh) terminal.

Index

• Mac Terminal Beautification Guide
• Ubuntu Terminal Beautification Guide

Mac

Steps

1. Install iTerm2

• Download and install iTerm2 from this download link
• Make sure zsh is the default terminal shell. Check the default terminal shell by typing echo $0 in the terminal.
  • If it's not the default, install it with brew install zsh using Homebrew. Then change the default shell by typing chsh -s $(which zsh).

2. Install color scheme

Can't do without a nice color theme.

• Go to iterm2colorschemes.com and pick a theme of your liking. I'm going for Gruvbox Dark.
• Install the theme by following the description on the main page.

3. Install Oh My Zsh!

Oh My Zsh is a delightful, open source, community-driven framework for managing your Zsh configuration. It comes bundled with thousands of helpful functions, helpers, plugins, themes, and a few things that make you shout...

• Install oh-my-zsh by using curl:
  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

4. Install a Nerd Font

Nerd Fonts patches developer targeted fonts with a high number of glyphs (icons).

• Download the font of your liking on NerdFont.com. I'm using Hack.
• Install the fonts you just downloaded.
• Go to the preferences in iTerm2 and set the font to the font you just installed.

5. Install Powerlevel10k

• Clone the repository:
  git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git "${ZSH_CUSTOM:-$HOME/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k"
• Open ~/.zshrc, find the line that sets ZSH_THEME, and change its value to "powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k".
• Reload ~/.zshrc by typing source ~/.zshrc.
• Follow instructions.

6. Additional plug-ins

• zsh-syntax-highlighting

  • Install with Homebrew: brew install zsh-syntax-highlighting
  • Copy and paste the following in iTerm2 to add it to the .zshrc file:
    echo "source $(brew --prefix)/share/zsh-syntax-highlighting/zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh" >> ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zshrc
  • Reload the terminal by typing source ~/.zshrc.

• zsh-auto-suggestions

  • Copy and paste the following in iTerm2:
    git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
  • Add the plugin to the list of plugins for Oh My Zsh to load (inside ~/.zshrc): \

  plugins=(
      # other plugins...
      zsh-autosuggestions
  )
  

• Color LS

  • Install the colorls ruby gem with sudo gem install colorls in iTerm2.
  • Enable tab completion for flags by entering following line to your shell configuration file (~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc):
    source $(dirname $(gem which colorls))/tab_complete.sh
  • Add alias in .zshrc to replace ls command:
    alias lc='colorls'

Ubuntu

Steps

1. Install and setup zsh

• Install zsh by using your package manager of choice, e.g. sudo apt install zsh.
• Verify the installation by running zsh --version.
• Set zsh as default shell by running chsh -s $(which zsh).
• Quit and re-open to use the new default shell
• Test that it worked with echo $SHELL.

2. Install Oh My Zsh!

Oh My Zsh is a delightful, open source, community-driven framework for managing your Zsh configuration. It comes bundled with thousands of helpful functions, helpers, plugins, themes, and a few things that make you shout...

• Install oh-my-zsh by using curl:
  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

4. Install a Nerd Font

Nerd Fonts patches developer targeted fonts with a high number of glyphs (icons).

• Download the font of your liking on NerdFont.com. I'm using Hack.
• Install the fonts you just downloaded.
• Go to the preferences in iTerm2 and set the font to the font you just installed.

5. Install Powerlevel10k

• Clone the repository:
  git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git "${ZSH_CUSTOM:-$HOME/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k"
• Open ~/.zshrc, find the line that sets ZSH_THEME, and change its value to "powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k".
• Reload ~/.zshrc by typing source ~/.zshrc.
• Follow instructions.

6. Additional plug-ins

• zsh-syntax-highlighting

  • Install with Homebrew: brew install zsh-syntax-highlighting
  • Copy and paste the following in iTerm2 to add it to the .zshrc file:
    echo "source $(brew --prefix)/share/zsh-syntax-highlighting/zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh" >> ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zshrc
  • Reload the terminal by typing source ~/.zshrc.

• zsh-auto-suggestions

  • Copy and paste the following in zsh:
    git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
  • Add the plugin to the list of plugins for Oh My Zsh to load (inside ~/.zshrc):

  plugins=(
      # other plugins...
      zsh-autosuggestions
  )
  

• Color LS

  • Install the colorls ruby gem with sudo gem install colorls in zsh.
  • Enable tab completion for flags by entering following line to your shell configuration file (~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc):
    source $(dirname $(gem which colorls))/tab_complete.sh
  • Add alias in .zshrc to replace ls command:
    alias lc='colorls'