Step 2: Install iTerm2. ITerm2 is a replacement for terminal and the successor to iTerm. Most software engineers prefer iTerm2 over the default. The superb macOS terminal app. The first time I started using a terminal app was back in the days when News47ell was hosted by DigitalOcean. I used to SSH into my server when I needed to manage the backend of my site. Now, I use the terminal to build and manage News47ell on GitHub.

iTerm is a full featured terminal emulation program written for OS X using Cocoa. We are aiming at providing users with best command line experience under OS X. The letter i represents a native apple look and feel of the program interface, and an emphasis on complete international support.

iTerm project is currently on hold (See the goodbye note from Fabian). We recommend you to check out iTerm 2, a new project that is based on iTerm and has many new features and enhancements.

Features

Highlights

• Full screen mode for a distraction free environment.
• Transparent windows with blurring and custom background pictures
• Supports select-to-copy and mid-button paste
• Smart window placement
• xterm mouse reporting for click and scroll events
• Focus follow mouse
• Applescript support
• Bonjour support
• Works on PowerPC and Intel Macs on 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6

VT100 Emulation

• terminfo support with flexible custom key-mapping
• Supports a variety of additional xterm escape sequences, including xterm titling sequence and xterm mouse reporting
• ANSI 16 colors, which are also fully customizable
• Supports 256 color mode
• Setting of the COLORFGBG variable for autodetection of color scheme in apps like Vim
• Anti-idle function that avoids disconnection because of no activity

Tabbed Terminals

• Tabs can be drag and drop between windows.
• Tab labels can change color to indicate the session activities
• Choose among Metal, Aqua, Adium, and Unified styles
• You can send keyboard input to multiple tabs

Bookmarks and Profiles

• You can fully customize each session, with support of macro in bookmark commands
• Bookmarks can be specified to handle URLs such as ftp.
• Create profiles for managing bookmark settings.

Multi-Lingual

• User can specify a second font to display non-latin characters to achieve best look
• Supports double-width characters, as used in many eastern Asian languages
• Supports all language encodings that are available with OS X

by Chiamaka Ikeanyi

Sometimes, using the default terminal sucks. You want to go out of the ordinary, to add life to the boring terminal and improve your productivity.

Z shell (Zsh) is a Unix shell built on top of bash (the default shell for macOS) with a large number of improvements.

In this walk-through, we will configure iTerm2 with ZSH and its dependencies. This is a no-brainer, and after this, you’ll ponder the reason for not discovering ZSH earlier. Well, since you’re here already, let’s kick-start this. Dell u2312hm driver for mac.

Keynotes

• Homebrew installation
• iTerm2 installation
• ZSH and Oh My ZSH installations
• Setting up the dependencies to create a beautiful terminal

Step 1: Install Homebrew

Homebrew is a free and open-source software package management system that simplifies the installation of software on Apple’s macOS.

Before installing Homebrew, we need to install the CLI tools for Xcode. Open your terminal and run the command:

If you get an error, run xcode-select -r to reset xcode-select.

Then, install Homebrew.

Step 2: Install iTerm2

iTerm2 is a replacement for terminal and the successor to iTerm. Most software engineers prefer iTerm2 over the default terminal that ships with macOS as a result of its cool features. You can integrate zsh into iTerm2 to increase productivity.

To install iTerm2, run the command:

Step 3: Install ZSH

Zsh is a shell designed for interactive use, although it is also a powerful scripting language.

By default, macOs ships with zsh located in/bin/zsh.

Let’s install zsh using brew and make iTerm2 use it.

Step 4: Install Oh My Zsh

“Oh My Zsh is an open source, community-driven framework for managing your zsh configuration. It will not make you a 10x developer…but you might feel like one”

— Robby Russell

It runs on Zsh to provide cool features configurable within the ~/.zhrc config file. Install Oh My Zsh by running the command

Check the installed version

You can upgrade it to get the latest features it offers.

Restart iTerm2 to dive into the new experience of using Zsh. Welcome to the “Oh My Zsh” world ?.

That’s not all. Now, we will install the dependencies to get the best out of Zsh.

Step 5: Change the Default Theme

Oh My Zsh comes bundled with a lot of themes. The default theme is robbyrussell, but you can change it to any theme of your choice. In this scenario, I changed it to agnoster, an already pre-installed theme.

You then need to select this theme in your ~/.zshrc. To open the config file (.zshrc), run the command:

Or open the file in a text editor with

Set the zsh theme and update your changes

Using a Custom Theme

To install another theme not pre-installed, clone the repository into custom/themesdirectory. In this scenario, we’ll install powerlevel9k,

Then, select this theme in your ~/.zshrcFotor photo editor for mac how to change the color on one thing in image.

Update your changes by running the command source ~/.zshrc

Navigate to iTerm2 > Preferences > Profiles > Colors if you wish to change the background color of the terminal.

The selected theme in this scenario requires powerline fonts. So, let’s install that.

Step 6: Install Fonts

I will be using Inconsolata. Get your preferred font out of these powerline fonts. Then, download and install it.

Or download the entire font.

To change the font, navigate to iTerm2 > Preferences > Profiles > Text > Change Font.

Now, you can see Inconsolata listed as one of the fonts. Select your preferred font. For fonts that support ligatures like FiraCode, check the “Use ligatures” option to view your arrows and other operators in a stylish manner like ( → ).

Step 7: Install Color Scheme

Let’s change the color scheme to bring out the beauty of our terminal. Navigate to iTerm2-Color-Schemes and download the ZIP folder. Then, extract the downloaded folder cos what we need resides in the schemes folder.

Navigate to iTerm2 > Preferences > Profile > Colors > Color Presets > Import

• Navigate to the schemes folder and select your preferred color schemes to import them.
• Click on a specific color scheme to activate it. In this scenario, I activated Batman which is my preferred color scheme.

Tada! ? We’re done with the basic settings.

Step 8: Install Plugins

Oh My ZSH comes preloaded with a git plugin. To add more, for instance, docker, auto-suggestion, syntax highlighting and more:

• Clone the Git repository

• Head over to .oh-my-zsh > custom > plugins directory to view the cloned directory. To access this, run the command open ~/.oh-my-zsh
• Add the plugin to the plugin section of the config file ~/.zshrc shown below
• Update your changes by running the command source ~/.zshrc

Step 9: Add Aliases

Aliases are shortcuts used to reduce the time spent on typing commands. Add aliases to commands you run in the section shown below.

Thanks for reading.

If you know about other means of improving productivity using ZSH, you can drop them on the comment section, I will be glad to hear from you.