tools

Terminal Setup

Created: May 30, 2021

Updated: May 30, 2021

6 min read

When I first started coding in college, one of the scariest pieces of technology to me was the terminal. Back then OSX shipped with bash and the default was just plain hard to look at, so I didn't.

Often tell junior developers to get as comfortable as possible with the terminal as soon as they can. I recount a tale from my college years where, just a few hours before a due date, I rm -rfed my project and had to redo it in a rush. This was solely because I was hesitant to use the terminal and didn't realize what I was doing. Being comfortable on the terminal is a critical skill as a dev, so being on your terminal should feel amazing.

Over the years I've played around with a bunch of different terminal setups and even written themes of my own. But I've really come to love my current setup. This post will detail how do make your's looks like this too! Be sure to check out my set of Better Default Tools.

Terminal App

The default terminal for OSX is okay but I always install iterm for all it's great features.

iTerm settings

Beautiful Font

The default rendering just kind of feels "off". To make it buttery smooth go to Preferences => Profiles => Text and check Enable subpixel anti-aliasing. This is a huge quality of life improvement.

The them I use recommends to install these fonts and I wholeheartedly agree.

Then go to Preferences => Profiles => Text and change the font to MesloLGS NF. I also up the default font size to 16 instead of 12. You will need to restart iTerm for it to save you font selection to the default profile.

Minimal Theme

Go to Preferences => Appearance => General and change Theme to Minimal. This is what makes the terminal's toolbar black and uniform with the rest of the app.

Unfocused Pane Dimming

Go to Preferences => Appearance => Dimming and make sure everything but Dim background windows is checked. This will make it so that when you split panes the unfocused pane isn't distracting.

Split Pane in Same Directory

Something that I hated about terminal splitting was that the new terminal starts out in the home directory.

Go to Preferences => Profiles => General => Working Directory
Select Advanced Configuration
Click Edit
Change Working Directory for New Split Panes to Reuse previous session's directory

Quiet New Terminal Prompts

When you make a new terminal it will spit out a bunch of text you don't care about. Run the following command to silence all of these! This even works on corporate computers!


❯ touch ~/.hushlogin

Shell Configuration Manager

And then the next thing I install oh-my-zsh. From their website:

Oh My Zsh is a delightful, open source, community-driven framework for managing your Zsh configuration.

We will this utilize the theming and plugin support


❯ sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Theme

Theming your terminal usually involves a lot of setup and tweaking. Recently I found powerlevel10k and am absolutely in love.

Features:

Setup is a breeze
The font the have you install looks amazing on a terminal
Instantly responsive on a new tab (I type so fast now!)
Transient Prompt make having information on your terminal prompt useable

Install the theme on your machine:


❯ git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k

Set the theme in ~/.zshrc:

~/.zshrc

ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k"

Once you restart your terminal you will go through the setup to customize your terminal. If you like the way mine above is rendered, you can grab mine here.

p10k Customizations

In this section I explain the customization I did to my ~./.p10k.zsh. If you use mine you do not have to read any of this, as it has already been done for you

Left Prompt

On the left side I added a custom icon on the first line, and a prompt character on the second line. The rest of the values are the defaults.

~/.p10k.zsh

typeset -g POWERLEVEL9K_LEFT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(
  # =========================[ Line #1 ]=========================
  my_icon
  dir                     # current directory
  vcs                     # git status
  # =========================[ Line #2 ]=========================
  newline                 # 
 
  prompt_char           # prompt symbol
)
 
# Display a custom Icon the changes depending on the time
# Use the Font Book on your mac to figure out the character
# To change the color change `-f 070` to a different 256 color
function prompt_my_icon() {
  local -i currentTime=${(%):-%D{%H%M}}
 
  if (( currentTime > 1619 || currentTime < 421 )); then
    # Weed
    p10k segment -f 070 -i 'ﲤ'
  else
    # Duck
    p10k segment -f 227 -i ''
  fi
}

Right Prompt

Here I un-commented any node version detection and added three items to the second line of the prompt. These three segments are only show on previous commands.

status - Whether the last command failed or passed
time - The time the last command was run
dir - The directory the command was run from

This is super useful when your are looking back on commands you've run. You know the context in which they were ran and that information isn't cluttered with all the other stuff in your prompt.

~/.p10k.zsh

typeset -g POWERLEVEL9K_RIGHT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(
  # =========================[ Line #1 ]=========================
  # ALL THE DEFAULTS DONT DELETE THEM. REMOVED FOR CLARITY
  nodenv                  # node.js version from nodenv (https://github.com/nodenv/nodenv)
  node_version          # node.js version
  battery               # internal battery
  # =========================[ Line #2 ]=========================
  newline                 # 
 
  status
  time
  dir
)
 
# Turn of p10k's transient prompt so we can control it
typeset -g POWERLEVEL9K_TRANSIENT_PROMPT=off
 
# Hide the second line on the right side
function p10k-on-pre-prompt() {
  p10k display '1|*/left_frame'=show '2/right/(time|dir|status)'=hide
}
 
# Show the second line on the right side after command is run
function p10k-on-post-prompt() {
  p10k display '1|*/left_frame'=hide '2/right/(time|dir|status)'=show
}

ZSH Plugins

ZSH Plugins offer a lot and most of the are geared towards a specific dev stack. Finding the right plugin means an awesome tab completion experience. Install whatever you need, I don't use plugins for this though.

The two plugin I do use are

zsh-syntax-highlighting - Fish shell like syntax highlighting for Zsh. This is what makes my aliases/commands green above. If it's green then it's installed!
zsh-autosuggestions - Fish-like autosuggestions for zsh. Will show a preview of the last matching command while typing. Press right to use

Aliases

I started out not using aliases all that much, but as you get more comfortable with the terminal they become really useful. Create these as you see fit, that's the easiest way to remember them. My most uses aliases are my Git Aliases.

The following ones are simple and can fit most workflows:

~/.zshrc

# Alias the vs-code "code" command to something shorter
# You can use it to open anything in vscode "c ." will open the current directory
alias c="code"
 
# Open your .zshrc in VS Code
alias zshrc="c ~/.zshrc"
 
# Restart the terminal and ZSH
alias restart="exec zsh"

Terminal Keyboard Shortcuts

Being skilled with keyboard shortcuts can make you look like a superhero in a text editor. The default iTerm keyboard shortcuts are nothing like vs-codes so I was always inserting weird character in the terminal instead of quickly navigating text.

To fix this you can set up custom keyboard shortcuts in iTerm. Go to Preferences => Keys. For each of the following click the + button and make the Action set to Send Hex Code.

Shortcut	Result	Hex Code
`cmd + right`	Cursor to end of line	`0x05`
`cmd + left`	Cursor to start of line	`0x01`
`cmd + backspace`	Delete line	`0x15`
`alt + right`	Cursor skip one word right	`0x1b 0x66`
`alt + left`	Cursor skip one word left	`0x1b 0x62`
`alt + backspace`	Delete one word	`0x1b 0x08`