Ultimate way to beautify Mac terminal (oh-my-zsh) and plugin recommendations

Historical note: this guide reflects a 2018 macOS setup. The commands, default paths, and plugin URLs may have changed; verify them against the current project documentation.

If you use a Mac for development, Terminal is probably one of your most frequently used apps. This guide shows how I improved it with a custom profile, Oh My Zsh, a theme, and a small set of plugins.

We will be doing these for our Terminal

1. Install Terminal Profile: Customize Terminal Color
2. Install oh-my-zsh: Use the powerful zsh shell in Terminal
3. Install oh-my-zsh themes: Beautify oh-my-zsh
4. Install useful oh-my-zsh plugins: Add shortcuts and quality-of-life improvements

Preparation

Recommend to install homebrew first:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Install zsh if you are on macOS version prior to Catalina:

# Install zsh
brew install zsh
# Set zsh as your default shell
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/zsh

Install Terminal Profile

1. Go to osx-terminal-theme and download your favorite theme in scheme folder
2. Double click the theme file to install and set as default

Feel free to use my Terminal Profile if you would like to try: https://gist.github.com/tonyxu-io/6b845cb1a53622eb4f1ce4063365e427

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:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Install oh-my-zsh theme

Built-in themes

oh-my-zsh provides some built-in themes which you can immediately use:

1. Find your favorite theme in built-in themes list: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/wiki/Themes
2. Set ZSH_THEME to your favorite theme name in ~/.zshrc
3. Activate setting by source ~/.zshrc

Third-party themes

There are more third-party themes developed for oh-my-zsh; find and install them here:

https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/wiki/External-themes

Install oh-my-zsh must-have plugins

oh-my-zsh has many powerful plugins, below are some must-have plugins that will boost your productivity.

Sample config:

# ~/.zshrc:
plugins=(
  git
  extract
  autojump
  zsh-autosuggestions
  zsh-syntax-highlighting
)

git

Built-in，use abbreviations for git commands, e.g. gaa -> git add --all, use alias | grep git to get all abbreviations commands

Activate: Add git to ~/.zshrc plugins list.

extract

Built-in, no need to use complicated tar to extract zip files

Activate: Add extract to the ~/.zshrc plugins list.

Usage: extract file_name

autojump

Use j to quickly jump to a folder, e.g. j Downloads -> cd ~/Downloads

Install: brew install autojump

Activate: Add autojump to ~/.zshrc plugins list.

zsh-syntax-highlighting

Commands syntax highlight plugin

Install: git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting

Activate: Add zsh-syntax-highlighting to ~/.zshrc plugins list.

zsh-autosuggestions

Auto complete commands by typing →

Install: git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

Activate: Add zsh-autosuggestions to the ~/.zshrc plugins list.

My own ~/.zshrc config

# Path to your oh-my-zsh installation.
export ZSH=/Users/tonxu/.oh-my-zsh

# theme
ZSH_THEME="robbyrussell"

# plugins
plugins=(
  git
  extract
  autojump
  zsh-autosuggestions
  zsh-syntax-highlighting
)

source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh

# set language
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

# default editor
export EDITOR='vi'

# ssh key path
export SSH_KEY_PATH="~/.ssh/rsa_id"