How to install Oh My ZSH in your terminal and some useful plugins (Updated 2021)

In this post we will show you how to install Oh My ZSH in your terminal and start enjoying a better experience, especially if, like us, you use it for many hours every day.

What is Oh My ZSH?

Oh My ZSH is a super-pack of utilities, plugins and templates for the ZSH shell that lets you have a great terminal full of useful extras.

What is a terminal or console?

If you have ever used a terminal console, you will have noticed how boring it looks.

That is fine for occasional use, but when we start using our console every day we begin to miss a few features...

What is a Shell?

A shell is a set of instructions and commands that lets us work with our console.

ls -l

dir

Installing ZSH

Before installing Oh My ZSH, we need to have the ZSH shell installed:

Debian/Ubuntu and derivatives

sudo apt-get install git zsh

CentOS and derivatives

sudo yum install git zsh

Mac OS

brew install git zsh

Windows

On Windows you must install the Bash console first. Then follow the Ubuntu steps.

Setting ZSH as the default console

chsh -s $(which zsh)

usermod -s $(which zsh) $(whoami)

Installing Oh My ZSH

Install using curl

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

Install using wget

sh -c "$(wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh -O -)"

Tweaking our Oh My ZSH

Template/Plantilla/Tema

Edit the ~/.zshrc file and change ZSH_THEME:

 # If you come from bash you might have to change your $PATH. # export PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH # Path to your oh-my-zsh installation. export ZSH=/root/.oh-my-zsh ZSH_THEME="agnoster"

Antigen Plugin Manager

Debian/Ubuntu

apt-get install zsh-antigen

CentOS

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

Mac OS

brew install antigen

Add this to the ~/.zshrc file:

source ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/antigen/antigen.zsh

zsh-syntax-highlighting plugin

Debian/Ubuntu

apt-get install zsh-syntax-highlighting

CentOS

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

Mac OS

brew install zsh-syntax-highlighting

Include the plugin in ~/.zshrc:

 plugins=( git zsh-syntax-highlighting ) source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh

zsh-autosuggestions plugin

Manual installation

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

Then add this to ~/.zshrc after the previous plugin:

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

Mac OS

brew install zsh-autosuggestions

Add this to ~/.zshrc:

source /usr/local/share/zsh-autosuggestions/zsh-autosuggestions.zsh

Other settings

Remove username

 # Remove user prompt_context() { if [[ "$USER" != "$DEFAULT_USER" || -n "$SSH_CLIENT" ]]; then prompt_segment black default "%(!.%{%F{yellow}%}.)$USER" fi }