Oh My Zsh is an open source, community-driven framework for managing your zsh configuration.
Sounds boring. Let's try again.
Oh My Zsh will not make you a 10x developer...but you might feel like one.
Once installed, your terminal shell will become the talk of the town or your money back! With each keystroke in your command prompt, you'll take advantage of the hundreds of powerful plugins and beautiful themes. Strangers will come up to you in cafรฉs and ask you, "that is amazing! are you some sort of genius?"
Finally, you'll begin to get the sort of attention that you have always felt you deserved. ...or maybe you'll use the time that you're saving to start flossing more often. ๐ฌ
To learn more, visit ohmyz.sh and follow @ohmyzsh on Twitter.
Disclaimer: Oh My Zsh works best on macOS and Linux.
- Unix-like operating system (macOS or Linux)
- Zsh should be installed (v4.3.9 or more recent). If not pre-installed (
zsh --version
to confirm), check the following instruction here: Installing ZSH curl
orwget
should be installedgit
should be installed
Oh My Zsh is installed by running one of the following commands in your terminal. You can install this via the command-line with either curl
or wget
.
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alexcote1/oh-my-zsh/master/oh-my-zsh.sh)"
sh -c "$(wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alexcote1/oh-my-zsh/master/oh-my-zsh.sh -O -)"
Oh My Zsh comes with a shitload of plugins to take advantage of. You can take a look in the plugins directory and/or the wiki to see what's currently available.
Once you spot a plugin (or several) that you'd like to use with Oh My Zsh, you'll need to enable them in the .zshrc
file. You'll find the zshrc file in your $HOME
directory. Open it with your favorite text editor and you'll see a spot to list all the plugins you want to load.
vi ~/.zshrc
For example, this might begin to look like this:
plugins=(
git
bundler
dotenv
osx
rake
rbenv
ruby
)
Most plugins (should! we're working on this) include a README, which documents how to use them.
We'll admit it. Early in the Oh My Zsh world, we may have gotten a bit too theme happy. We have over one hundred themes now bundled. Most of them have screenshots on the wiki. Check them out!
Robby's theme is the default one. It's not the fanciest one. It's not the simplest one. It's just the right one (for him).
Once you find a theme that you'd like to use, you will need to edit the ~/.zshrc
file. You'll see an environment variable (all caps) in there that looks like:
ZSH_THEME="robbyrussell"
To use a different theme, simply change the value to match the name of your desired theme. For example:
ZSH_THEME="agnoster" # (this is one of the fancy ones)
# see https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/wiki/Themes#agnoster
Note: many themes require installing the Powerline Fonts in order to render properly.
Open up a new terminal window and your prompt should look something like this:
In case you did not find a suitable theme for your needs, please have a look at the wiki for more of them.
If you're feeling feisty, you can let the computer select one randomly for you each time you open a new terminal window.
ZSH_THEME="random" # (...please let it be pie... please be some pie..)
And if you want to pick random theme from a list of your favorite themes:
ZSH_THEME_RANDOM_CANDIDATES=(
"robbyrussell"
"agnoster"
)
If you're the type that likes to get their hands dirty, these sections might resonate.
Some users may want to change the default path, or manually install Oh My Zsh.
The default location is ~/.oh-my-zsh
(hidden in your home directory)
If you'd like to change the install directory with the ZSH
environment variable, either by running export ZSH=/your/path
before installing, or by setting it before the end of the install pipeline like this:
export ZSH="$HOME/.dotfiles/oh-my-zsh"; sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
git clone https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh.git ~/.oh-my-zsh
cp ~/.zshrc ~/.zshrc.orig
You can create a new zsh config file by copying the template that we have included for you.
cp ~/.oh-my-zsh/templates/zshrc.zsh-template ~/.zshrc
chsh -s /bin/zsh
Once you open up a new terminal window, it should load zsh with Oh My Zsh's configuration.
If you have any hiccups installing, here are a few common fixes.
- You might need to modify your
PATH
in~/.zshrc
if you're not able to find some commands after switching tooh-my-zsh
. - If you installed manually or changed the install location, check the
ZSH
environment variable in~/.zshrc
.
If you want to override any of the default behaviors, just add a new file (ending in .zsh
) in the custom/
directory.
If you have many functions that go well together, you can put them as a XYZ.plugin.zsh
file in the custom/plugins/
directory and then enable this plugin.
If you would like to override the functionality of a plugin distributed with Oh My Zsh, create a plugin of the same name in the custom/plugins/
directory and it will be loaded instead of the one in plugins/
.
By default, you will be prompted to check for upgrades every few weeks. If you would like oh-my-zsh
to automatically upgrade itself without prompting you, set the following in your ~/.zshrc
:
DISABLE_UPDATE_PROMPT=true
To disable automatic upgrades, set the following in your ~/.zshrc
:
DISABLE_AUTO_UPDATE=true
If you'd like to upgrade at any point in time (maybe someone just released a new plugin and you don't want to wait a week?) you just need to run:
upgrade_oh_my_zsh
Magic! ๐
Oh My Zsh isn't for everyone. We'll miss you, but we want to make this an easy breakup.
If you want to uninstall oh-my-zsh
, just run uninstall_oh_my_zsh
from the command-line. It will remove itself and revert your previous bash
or zsh
configuration.
I'm far from being a Zsh expert and suspect there are many ways to improve โ if you have ideas on how to make the configuration easier to maintain (and faster), don't hesitate to fork and send pull requests!
We also need people to test out pull-requests. So take a look through the open issues and help where you can.
We have (more than) enough themes for the time being. Please add your theme to the external themes wiki page.
Oh My Zsh has a vibrant community of happy users and delightful contributors. Without all the time and help from our contributors, it wouldn't be so awesome.
Thank you so much!
We're on the social media.
We have stickers and shirts for you to show off your love of Oh My Zsh. Again, this will help you become the talk of the town!
Oh My Zsh is released under the MIT license.
Oh My Zsh was started by the team at Planet Argon, a Ruby on Rails development agency. Check out our other open source projects.