How to setup you terminal on MacOS for powerusers
If you spend a lot of time in terminal and want to get the most out of it, this is the guide for you. I will go through MacOS terminal setup from zero to “GUI? Why would use that?”. Before you get started, I must warn you, this is an opinionated guide and I will mostly recommend what I personally like and use. Have that in mind and don’t forget to try multiple things, to see what fits you best. Also, this guide is mostly to show all the fun stuff you can do from terminal. If you want to learn useful things with basic terminal setup try The Art of Command Line.
If you don’t have any experience with terminal but would like to learn more, try starting with this introduction Discovering the terminal. When you get more confident with terminal feel free to return here and learn more!
Install Homebrew
Homebrew is a free, open-source software package manager for MacOS (and Linux too) that simplifies
installation of applications and packages on your system. Simplifies might be an understatement here because
with it doesn’t get much easier than writing brew cask install microsoft-word.
To install Homebrew run:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"
This will take you through the installation process. Before any changes the script will inform you what it
will do and will wait for your confirmation. When the script completes you are all set and done.
From now on, you can install and update almost anything using Homebrew.
Your daily usage of homebrew will consist of brew install [aplication] and brew cask install [aplication].
In general, brew install is for CLI tools and applications, and brew cask install is for full-featured GUI
applications that you would otherwise install by downloading their binary from the website or app store.
And once in a while, if you remember, update all your tools to their latest version using brew upgrade.
Brew has of course many more features but for the purpose of this article we won’t need much more. If you still want to learn more, visit the official documentation.
Install iTerm 2
iTerm 2 is terminal emulator for MacOS that has plenty of cool features and settings.
You don’t need it and can use the default Terminal.app that comes shipped with all MacOS distributions but you
would deprive yourself of many cool features.
brew cask install iterm2
Among the many cool features of iTerm 2 you will find things such as split pane, paste history, profiles, trigger, and much more. You can read about the various feature here.
Now, you might not like the default colors of iTerm 2. Before changing the theme though, I recommend you finish
the ZSH installation so your terminal actually uses some colors, because by default, it doesn’t.
To try out multiple color themes first download the color themes zip file from iterm2colorschemes.com/.
Unpack it and then go to your iTerm to iTerm 2 > Preferences... > Profiles > Colors.
In the bottom right corner click Color Presets... > Import... and select all the themes in schemes folder
in the extracted directory. This will import all the themes into iTerm and you will be able to easily change
them by selecting them from the Color Presets. Eventually you will find out which one you like,
or you will get stuck changing them forever, who knows…
The theme is really a matter of personal preference. I was looking for a dark theme with high contrast colors and found out, that the Symphonic theme suits me the best. You go ahead, I try out what is best for you.
Install ZSH
ZSH or Z Shell is shell designed for interactive use. ZSH incorporates many features from other shells such as bash, ksh, or tcsh. This includes but is not limited to: file globbing, shell functions, aliasing, parameters substitution and more. To install ZSH run:
brew install zsh
Install Oh My Zsh
“Oh My ZSH!” is a open source, community-driven framework for Zsh configuration management. It comes bundled with functions, helpers, plugins, themes, and more… Install Oh My ZSH by running:
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
Best thing about Oh My Zsh is the plugins, you can find most of them in the exhausting
Plugins Overview and there’s even more exhausting
list without descriptions on the Plugins wiki page.
Plugins are enabled by listing them in plugins variable in your ~/.zshrc and Oh My ZSH will take care of the rest
(installation, updates, etc.).
# ZSH plugins
plugins=(
git
docker
copyfile # copy the content of a file
encode64 # encode to base64
extract # extract any type of archvie
web-search # search for something on internet: ddg cat, google dog
git-extras # super cool autocompletion for git command
httpie # completion for httpie
catimg # cat but for images
...
)
Oh My ZSH provides also tones of themes to select from, all listed ZSH Github Wiki - Themes Page but in this tutorial, we will install Powerlevel10k, the one that I like the most (and trusty me, I have tried quite a few).
Install Powerlevel10k
Powerlevel10k is a theme for Zsh. It emphasizes speed, flexibility and out-of-the-box experience.
Indeed, Powerlevel10k is super fast, flexible and can be configured to your liking. If you want to experience the speed yourself, I recommend installing Powerlevel9k first and sticking with it for a few days, then installing Powerlevel10k, you won’t believe your eyes. Install Powerlevel10k using:
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k $ZSH_CUSTOM/themes/powerlevel10k
And set ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k" in ~/.zshrc. To configure the theme and set style
and options that you prefer run:
p10k configure
This will take you through the setup process where you will step by step select what you prefer and like.
If you are unhappy with the result it’s ok to run the p10k configure again.
I use the Pure setup because I used Pure before, liked the lean and clear style, but missed the speed of powerlevel.
Shell productivity
Above programs and tools provide many features that can speed things up but first one needs to learn them. Since writing about shell shortcuts, navigation, expansions, etc. would be for one article itself I will just point you to this awesome Shell productivity tips and tricks guide by Balthazar Rouberol.
The Fun
We installed Homebrew, iTerm 2, ZSH, Oh My ZSH and Powelevel10k; if you still bare with me - now the fun begins,
I promise. We have nice, lean and fast terminal but what kind of amateurs would we be if we didn’t do absolutely
everything we can from the comfort of commandline. For example, what if you want to check what’s the weather like?
Pretty simple right? We can google it. But that would be lame and simple, instead, lets add the following function to our
~/.zshrc:
weather(){
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then curl wttr.in; else http "wttr.in/$1"; fi
}
then source the ~/.zshrc file: source ~/.zshrc and try it out:
$ weather berlin
Weather report: berlin
\ / Partly cloudy
_ /"".-. -1..+1 °C
\_( ). → 6 km/h
/(___(__) 10 km
3.0 mm
┌─────────────┐
┌──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤ Mon 30 Mar ├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│ Morning │ Noon └──────┬──────┘ Evening │ Night │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ \ / Partly cloudy │ Overcast │ .-. Heavy snow │ _`/"".-. Patchy heavy s…│
│ _ /"".-. -1..+2 °C │ .--. 1..4 °C │ ( ). 0..3 °C │ ,\_( ). -2..+2 °C │
│ \_( ). → 13-15 km/h │ .-( ). → 17-19 km/h │ (___(__) ↘ 11-14 km/h │ /(___(__) ↖ 14-20 km/h │
│ /(___(__) 10 km │ (___.__)__) 10 km │ * * * * 4 km │ * * * * 8 km │
│ 0.0 mm | 0% │ 0.0 mm | 0% │ * * * * 2.7 mm | 66% │ * * * * 1.0 mm | 21% │
└──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
┌─────────────┐
┌──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤ Tue 31 Mar ├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│ Morning │ Noon └──────┬──────┘ Evening │ Night │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ \ / Partly cloudy │ Overcast │ Overcast │ _`/"".-. Patchy snow po…│
│ _ /"".-. -1..+2 °C │ .--. 2..4 °C │ .--. 2..3 °C │ ,\_( ). 0 °C │
│ \_( ). ↓ 10-11 km/h │ .-( ). ↗ 11-12 km/h │ .-( ). → 9-10 km/h │ /(___(__) ↗ 9-12 km/h │
│ /(___(__) 10 km │ (___.__)__) 10 km │ (___.__)__) 9 km │ ‘ * ‘ * 10 km │
│ 0.0 mm | 0% │ 0.0 mm | 0% │ 0.0 mm | 0% │ * ‘ * ‘ 0.0 mm | 0% │
└──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
┌─────────────┐
┌──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤ Wed 01 Apr ├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│ Morning │ Noon └──────┬──────┘ Evening │ Night │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ \ / Partly cloudy │ Cloudy │ _`/"".-. Patchy rain po…│ Overcast │
│ _ /"".-. 0..4 °C │ .--. 4..7 °C │ ,\_( ). 3..6 °C │ .--. 2..5 °C │
│ \_( ). ↗ 17-21 km/h │ .-( ). → 18-21 km/h │ /(___(__) → 16-24 km/h │ .-( ). → 15-24 km/h │
│ /(___(__) 10 km │ (___.__)__) 10 km │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 10 km │ (___.__)__) 10 km │
│ 0.0 mm | 0% │ 0.0 mm | 0% │ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 0.0 mm | 29% │ 0.1 mm | 52% │
└──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
Location: Berlin [52.52045,13.40732]
Follow @igor_chubin for wttr.in updates
From now on, you don’t ever need to leave the command line if you need to know if it’s raining outside. And we are just getting started…
Essential CLI Tools
-
ag - The Silver Searcher - crazy fast code searching tool similar to
ack.Install with:
brew install the_silver_searcher -
jq - flexible and lightweight JSON processor that allows you to slice, transform, map and filter JSON data with eas.
Install with:
brew install jq -
HTTPie -
curl/wgetalternative with highlighting, JSON support, plugins and much more.Install using:
brew install httpie -
fzf - command line fuzzy finder for anything. With
fzfyou can easily search for files, directories, commands from history and more using fuzzy matching.Install using:
brew install fzf
and to enable useful key bindings:$(brew --prefix)/opt/fzf/install -
exa - modern alternative to
ls. Exa ships with better defaults and colorful highlighting, it has also support for git, symlinks and file attributes and is written in rust, so it is super fast.Install using:
brew install exaExample:
$ exa --group-directories-first -T go-nanoid go-nanoid ├── examples │ └── simple_example.go ├── go.mod ├── gonanoid.go ├── gonanoid_test.go ├── LICENSE ├── Makefile └── README.md -
noti - monitor for processes that triggers notification once the process completes. Nice thing for long builds, uploads or downloads, and other long running scripts.
Install using:
brew install notiExample:
noti youtube-dl --extract-audio https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=iha_VCBfQMo -
tldr - simplified man pages with examples, for whenever you forget the command usage and don’t want to read through thousands of lines of man page to find the flag you are looking for. (On the other hand,
tldris sometimes too brief).Install using:
brew install tldrExample:
$ tldr cat cat Print and concatenate files. - Print the contents of a file to the standard output: cat file - Concatenate several files into the target file: cat file1 file2 > target_file - Append several files into the target file: cat file1 file2 >> target_file - Number all output lines: cat -n file - Display non-printable and whitespace characters (with `M-` prefix if non-ASCII): cat -v -t -e file -
Mackup - backup and keep your application settings in sync. Mackup supports multiple storages for backup - Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud and more.
Install using:
brew install mackupExample:
mackup backup -
ffsend - easily and securely share files from the command line using Firefox Send.
ffsendhas also many useful features such as protecting the shared file with password or limiting the number of downloads.Install using:
brew install ffsendExample:
ffsend upload folder/ --archive --copy --no-interact --download-limit=1(shares whole folder, zipped, limits the number of downloads to one and copies the URL of the file to your clipboard) -
gist - upload content to gist.github.com. Gist makes it easy to share code snippets, simple markdown files and more, all from the command line.
Install using:
brew install gistExample:
then gist -p -c README.md(creates private gist with README.md and copies the URL into your clipboard) -
youtube-dl - download videos, audio or whole playlists from youtube.
Install using:
brew install youtube-dlExample:
youtube-dl --extract-audio https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=iha_VCBfQMo -
bat -
catalternative with colors and more.Install using:
brew install batExample:
bat -A .gitconfig
Making it easier with aliases
I introduced you to tones of tools that you most probably already forgot before getting to this line. Also, if you are lazy like me, you don’t want to write the whole command every single time. Solution? Aliases. Lets type less and do more with following:
-
Navigation - here’s a few aliases that make the navigation easier
alias ..="cd .." alias ...="cd ../.." alias ....="cd ../../.." alias .....="cd ../../../.." alias ~="cd ~" # `cd` is probably faster to type though alias -- -="cd -" # switch between old and present working directory -
Alternatives - I use a lot of alternatives to common tools so I override them using aliases
alias cat="bat" alias download="http --follow --download" alias diff="colordiff" alias diff="colordiff" alias rm="trash" # this is a live saver alias ls="exa --group-directories-first" -
Shortcuts - lets create shorter names for commands that are used often
alias g="git" alias reload!='. ~/.zshrc' alias x="exit" alias sz="source ~/.zshrc" alias ls="exa --group-directories-first" alias lst="exa --group-directories-first -T" alias ll="exa --group-directories-first -l" alias la="exa --group-directories-first -a" alias lat="exa --group-directories-first -a -T" alias path='echo -e ${PATH//:/\\n}' -
Fun - some other fun shorthands that are pretty much useless but nice to have.
# Stuff I never really use but cannot delete either because of https://xkcd.com/530/ # original aliases used 'muted true' instead of 'volume 0', I find this better alias stfu="osascript -e 'set volume output volume 0'" alias pumpit="osascript -e 'set volume output volume 100'" alias afk="/System/Library/CoreServices/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine" alias sleep="pmset sleepnow"
Functions
Last but not least, there are things for which aliases are short or you need additional logic. That’s where function come in handy, again, here’s a list of the ones I use in no particular order. (Except the first one, that’s my love).
-
Share anything from command line - I already talked about the
ffsendcommand for sharing but this functions takes it step further:# share file for one download only, uses https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend share(){ ffsend upload $1 --archive --copy --no-interact --download-limit=1 }This function will: archive the file (or files, or directory), upload it, set the download limit to 1 download and copy the link to the sharable URL to your clipboard. Pretty neat right! I use this anytime I get a request to share some photos (in reasonable size) or documents.
Git Aliases
To speed up the development I also use bunch of git aliases so I can type less and do more.
These are mostly individual and depend on personal preferences but one that I found especially useful
in my day to day use is cane = commit --amend --no-edit. In our team at Kiwi.com we always do 1 commit
per MR, this means that I often add changes to already pushed commits and this alias makes it super
easy and fast.
[alias]
w = switch
hist = log --pretty=format:'%h %ad | %s%d [%an]' --graph --date=short
type = cat-file -t
dump = cat-file -p
c = commit
b = branch
s = status
p = pull
d = diff
lo = log --oneline -n 10
unstage = reset HEAD
pushf = push --force-with-lease
cane = commit --amend --no-edit
[apply]
whitespace = fix
[credential]
helper = osxkeychain
[push]
default = current
[rerere]
enabled = true