screenshot of terminal

While I was learning about terminal customization, I found that many websites tend to leap straight to projects like "oh-my-zsh" where you can choose from many pre-configured themes. Don't get me wrong, these projects are impressive and show how wildly flexible ZSH can be, but I wanted to learn something along the way. Since I learn best by doing, I wanted to explore and build my configuration by hand.

I thank everyone who has made articles like this one by Armin Briegel. While I borrow from and build on the shoulders of these developers, I do strive to understand exactly what the code is doing, and I will do my best to not only show the code but explain what it is and why.

For my prompt, I use hyper with the One Dark (Vivid) Theme.

Aliases #

We'll start with something simple, my list of aliases. I don't use the terminal so much that I need a lot of these, so I've focused on small quality of life shortcuts. You'll also find shortcuts for commands I forget all the time. I store these (and my functions) in an _aliases.zsh file I load into my .zshrc file.

Listing customizations #

My first set of aliases just lists various customizations I've made. aliases lists all of my aliases, functions lists my functions, and paths lists all paths being loaded.

alias aliases="alias | sed 's/=.*//'"
alias functions="declare -f | grep '^[a-z].* ()' | sed 's/{$//'"
alias paths='echo -e ${PATH//:/\\n}'

Utilities #

For some reason, I always have to look up how to make a script executable, so I made a shortcut make-exe to help me remember. I also forget how to create a symbolic link, so I made symlink and while this is more to type out, it keeps me from forgetting it. Lastly, I never know when I'll be required to use sudo so I made an alias please to rerun the last command with sudo.

alias symlink="ln -s"
alias make-exe="chmod 700"
alias please="sudo !!"`

Next, as a web developer, sometimes I have to mess with my hosts file. I made host-edit and clean-dns to make that easier.

alias host-edit="sudo -b /System/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit /etc/hosts"
alias clean-dns="sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder"

On the topic of network related things, I also have an alias to show my local ip address, without all of the other information.

alias ip="curl ifconfig.me"
alias ip-wifi="ipconfig getifaddr en0"
alias ip-wired="ipconfig getifaddr en1"

What version am I running? #

I ask this question a lot and depending on the software, the command could be different. Most seem to use -v but others require you to write out -version so I made a function to help me remember. This way, I can type version name where name is the command I want to know about.

function version {
  if [ "$1" = "git" ]
  then
    git --version
  elif [ "$1" = "node" ]
  then
    node -v
  elif [ "$1" = "npm" ]
  then
    npm -v
  elif [ "$1" = "php" ]
  then
    php -v
  elif [ "$1" = "composer" ]
  then
    composer -V
  else
    echo "Options: [git, node, npm, php, composer]"
  fi
}

The prompt #

You can find a complete list of prompt escapes on the ZSH docs, including login information, shell state, date and time, formatting, and more.

Before we really get started on the prompt, I want to style my path. This involves a very complicated string.

# This sets up some fancier formatting for the path
ZSH_PROMPT_PATH='${${${${(%):-%~}/${(%):-%1~}/ %B${(%):-%1~}%b}/ %B${(%):-%-1~}%b/%B${(%):-%-1~}%b}//\//%B%F{cyan\}/%f%b}'

Breaking this down, ${(%):-%~} is the full path, ${(%):-%1~} is the last item in the path, %B${(%):-%1~}%b is the styled version of the last item. The slashes / perform a substitution "source/find/replace. Each time a substitution happens, the previous one must be wrapped in ${} and the enture string has to be wrapped in ${} as well. I save this path string to a variable ZSH_PROMPT_PATH so we can use it later. %B and %b styles the text as bold while %F{color} and %f sets the text color.

The end result is a path where the separators are bold cyan and the last folder in the path is bold.

For my personal prompt, I like having an empty line followed by the full path on it's own line, then my username the @ symbol and the machine name. I also like having the time on the right side. To achieve this, I'll start by creating a function in my .zshrc file. This function will tell the prompt to print a blank line, then print the path using the ZSH_PROMPT_PATH variable we just made.

__prompt_precmd() {
  # Pass a line before each prompt
  print -P ''
  # Enable only for multiline prompt
  print -rP $ZSH_PROMPT_PATH
}

For this function to work, we need to load it into the precmd hook. You'll need to load add-zsh-hook first, then use our function to tell it what to do.

# Add precmd hooks
autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook
add-zsh-hook precmd __prompt_precmd

Now we get to the prompt line itself. %n displays the username and %m displays the machine name. Then I add a bold cyan arrow to signify the end of the prompt.

PROMPT="%n @ %m %B%F{cyan}❯%f%b "

Lastly, to add the time to the right side of the prompt, you can use RPROMPT and %t. You can put whatever information you like on the right side.

RPROMPT="%t"

Adding artwork #

You can add character artwork or letters at the beginning of your terminal by echoing each line in your .zshrc file. At the time of writing, I use this cute cat and my initials to add a little bit of personality. Not that you'll need to escape some characters with \.

echo "   |\---/|"
echo "   | ,_, |"
echo "    \_'_/-..----.              ____ ___  ____ ___"
echo " ___/ '   ' ,--+ \            / __ \`__ \/ __ \`__ \\"
echo "(__...'   __\    |'.___.';   / / / / / / / / / / /"
echo "  (_,...'(_,.'__)/'.....+   /_/ /_/ /_/_/ /_/ /_/"

If you want to check out the full code used here, in addition to all of the other modifications I've made, check out my dotfiles on GitHub!