Pimp my shell

27 February 2021

ZSH is an extraordinary shell. I wrote about that some years ago. In order to make the zsh a little bit more beautiful I prefer installing oh-my-zsh or Powerlevel10k. In this article I want to introduce some plugins I can’t live without anymore.

Oh-My-ZSH

ohmyzsh can be easily installed using curl:

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

That’s it. ohmyzsh ships with plenty of different themes. The default theme is “robbyrussel”. I change that to “dallas” in ~/.zshrc:

ZSH_THEME="dallas"

..and source the config-file to change the theme:

source ~/.zshrc

My shell looks finally like that:

ZSH-Autosuggestions

Zsh-autosuggestions unobtrusively suggests commands as you type based on history and completions. We can install it by saving it to the zsh-plugins-directory:

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions.git $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

After placing it into the plugins-directory we have to activate it by adding it to “plugins” in $HOME/.zshrc:

plugins=(git zsh-autosuggestions)

..and source the config-file to enable the plugin:

source ~/.zshrc

Now our shell suggests previous commands as we type. We can use the suggested command by pressing END or by pressing the right arrow-key

ZSH-Syntax-Hightlighting

Zsh-syntax-highlighting indicates if the typed command has syntax errors. As with zsh-autosuggestions, zsh-syntax-highlighting must be placed into the zsh-plugins-directory:

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting

Now we activate it by adding it to the plugins in $HOME/.zshrc:

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

..and source the config-file to enable the plugin:

source ~/.zshrc

Now our broken commands appear in red color and working commands in green:

FZF

fzf is a general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder. It enables fuzzy search when searching for previous commands or files. In order to install it we first download it using git:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/junegunn/fzf.git ~/.fzf
cd ~/.fzf/

{21-02-16 9:33}pat:~/.fzf@master pt% ./install
Downloading bin/fzf ...
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100   635  100   635    0     0  17638      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 17638
100 1122k  100 1122k    0     0  9434k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 9434k
  - Checking fzf executable ... 0.25.1
Do you want to enable fuzzy auto-completion? ([y]/n) 
Do you want to enable key bindings? ([y]/n) 

Generate /home/pt/.fzf.bash ... OK
Generate /home/pt/.fzf.zsh ... OK

Do you want to update your shell configuration files? ([y]/n) 

Update /home/pt/.bashrc:
  - [ -f ~/.fzf.bash ] && source ~/.fzf.bash
    + Added

Update /home/pt/.zshrc:
  - [ -f ~/.fzf.zsh ] && source ~/.fzf.zsh
    + Added

Finished. Restart your shell or reload config file.
   source ~/.bashrc  # bash
   source ~/.zshrc   # zsh

Use uninstall script to remove fzf.

For more information, see: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

We can (re-)source the $HOME/.zshrc with source ~/.zshrc in order to make it work. Now we can search files and directories using CTRL + t and paste the selected onto the command-line: