Oh My Zsh + PowerLevel10k = 😎 terminal

Abdfnabd
3 min readApr 12, 2021

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Hi there, The developers always use the terminal, but it is boring and has no colors or shapes.
Today we will transform our terminals into a wonderful, colorful, supportive terminal that offers suggestions and has a memory, we’ll do it by OMZ and design it by PowerLevel10k…

Pre-requisites

if you’re using Windows, you can install and configure WSL

and I recommended to use Ubuntu or Debian wsl plugin

Setup zsh

in the command line type

brew install zsh

type zsh

zsh

Install Oh My Zsh

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

PowerLevel10k

  • Install Powerlevel10k using the following command
# gh cli
gh repo clone romkatv/powerlevel10k $ZSH_CUSTOM/themes/powerlevel10k
# git
git clone https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git $ZSH_CUSTOM/themes/powerlevel10k

Then you need to enable it, change the value of ZSH_THEME to following in ~/.zshrc file :

ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k"

Configure Powerlevel10k Theme

  • Make sure your terminal font is FiraCode NF.

font link: url

for windows users: url

Cheat-sheet for Windows

if you’ve Windows terminal you can open your settings and in UNIX preferences and add fontFace prop,
assign it to FiraCode NF.

{
"guid": "{YOUR_UNIX_GUID}",
"hidden": false,
"name": "Ubuntu",
"source": "Windows.Terminal.Wsl",
"fontFace": "FiraCode NF",
"snapOnInput": true,
"useAcrylic": true
}

Windows Terminal url in Microsoft Store: url

Windows Terminal repo: url

p10k configure

type

p10k configure

you can choose your style…

Plugins (Optional, Good to have!)

Clone plugins

  • zsh-syntax-highlighting — It enables highlighting of commands whilst they are typed at a zsh prompt into an interactive terminal. This helps in reviewing commands before running them, particularly in catching syntax errors.
# gh cli
gh repo clone zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting
# git
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting
  • zsh-autosuggestions — It suggests commands as you type based on history and completions.
# gh cli
gh repo clone zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
# git
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

ls tools

  • colorls: A Ruby script that colorizes the ls output with color and icons
  • exa: is a modern replacement for ls

colorls

sudo gem install colorls

warn 🙃

maybe you’ll get some gem errors, you should fix it

Linux

sudo apt install ruby-full

exa

brew install exa

Activate the plugins

In ~/.zshrc file replace the line starting with plugins=() to below line.

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

colorls

if [ -x "$(command -v colorls)" ]; then
alias ls="colorls"
alias la="colorls -al"
fi

or exa

if [ -x "$(command -v exa)" ]; then
alias ls="exa"
alias la="exa --long --all --group"
fi

Some more official plugins — ohmyzsh plugins

after all these steps type

source ~/.zshrc

Finally it should be like this 👇

Mac

Windows(WSL) or Linux

check out my new cli app secman

That’s it, see you next time 👋

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Abdfnabd
Abdfnabd

Written by Abdfnabd

someone likes CLI/TUI apps, automation, server-sides, and backend.