ohmyzsh
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 may 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 cafés 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. 😬
To learn more, visit ohmyz.sh, follow @ohmyzsh on Twitter, and join us on Discord.
Table of Contents
- Getting Started
-
Using Oh My Zsh
<li> <a rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" href="#themes">Themes</a></p> <ul dir="auto"> <li> <a rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" href="#selecting-a-theme">Selecting a Theme</a> </li> </ul> </li> <li> <a rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" href="#faq">FAQ</a> </li> </ul>
-
Advanced Topics
<li> <a rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" href="#installation-problems">Installation Problems</a> </li> <li> <a rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" href="#custom-plugins-and-themes">Custom Plugins and Themes</a> </li> </ul>
- Getting Updates
- Uninstalling Oh My Zsh
- How do I contribute to Oh My Zsh?
- Contributors
- Follow Us
- Merchandise
- License
- About Planet Argon
Getting Started
Prerequisites
- A Unix-like operating system: macOS, Linux, BSD. On Windows: WSL2 is preferred, but cygwin or msys also mostly work.
-
Zsh should be installed (v4.3.9 or more recent is fine but we prefer 5.0.8 and newer). If not pre-installed (run
zsh --version
to confirm), check the following wiki instructions here: Installing ZSH -
curl
orwget
should be installed -
git
should be installed (recommended v2.4.11 or higher)
Basic Installation
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
, wget
or another similar tool.
Method
Command
curl
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
wget
sh -c "$(wget -O- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
fetch
sh -c "$(fetch -o - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
Note that any previous .zshrc
will be renamed to .zshrc.pre-oh-my-zsh
. After installation, you can move the configuration you want to preserve into the new .zshrc
.
Manual inspection
It’s a good idea to inspect the install script from projects you don’t yet know. You can do
that by downloading the install script first, looking through it so everything looks normal,
then running it:
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh sh install.sh
Using Oh My Zsh
Plugins
Oh My Zsh comes with a shitload of plugins for you to take advantage of. You can take a look in the plugins directory and/or the wiki to see what’s currently available.
Enabling Plugins
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 macos rake rbenv ruby )
Note that the plugins are separated by whitespace (spaces, tabs, new lines…). Do not use commas between them or it will break.
Using Plugins
Each built-in plugin includes a README, documenting it. This README should show the aliases (if the plugin adds any) and extra goodies that are included in that particular plugin.
Themes
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 and fifty themes now bundled. Most of them have screenshots on the wiki (We are working on updating this!). Check them out!
Selecting a Theme
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/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/wiki/Themes#agnoster
Note: many themes require installing a Powerline Font or a Nerd Font in order to render properly. Without them, these themes will render weird prompt symbols
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 only know which themes you don’t like, you can add them similarly to an ignored list:
ZSH_THEME_RANDOM_IGNORED=(pygmalion tjkirch_mod)
FAQ
If you have some more questions or issues, you might find a solution in our FAQ.
Advanced Topics
If you’re the type that likes to get their hands dirty, these sections might resonate.
Advanced Installation
Some users may want to manually install Oh My Zsh, or change the default path or other settings that
the installer accepts (these settings are also documented at the top of the install script).
Custom Directory
The default location is ~/.oh-my-zsh
(hidden in your home directory, you can access it with cd ~/.oh-my-zsh
)
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:
ZSH="$HOME/.dotfiles/oh-my-zsh" sh install.sh
Unattended install
If you’re running the Oh My Zsh install script as part of an automated install, you can pass the --unattended
flag to the install.sh
script. This will have the effect of not trying to change
the default shell, and it also won’t run zsh
when the installation has finished.
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)" "" --unattended
Installing from a forked repository
The install script also accepts these variables to allow installation of a different repository:
-
REPO
(default:ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh
): this takes the form ofowner/repository
. If you set
this variable, the installer will look for a repository athttps://github.com/{owner}/{repository}
. -
REMOTE
(default:https://github.com/${REPO}.git
): this is the full URL of the git repository
clone. You can use this setting if you want to install from a fork that is not on GitHub (GitLab,
Bitbucket…) or if you want to clone with SSH instead of HTTPS (git@github.com:user/project.git
).
NOTE: it’s incompatible with setting theREPO
variable. This setting will take precedence. -
BRANCH
(default:master
): you can use this setting if you want to change the default branch to be
checked out when cloning the repository. This might be useful for testing a Pull Request, or if you
want to use a branch other thanmaster
.
For example:
REPO=apjanke/oh-my-zsh BRANCH=edge sh install.sh
Manual Installation
1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh.git ~/.oh-my-zsh
~/.zshrc
file
2. Optionally, backup your existing cp ~/.zshrc ~/.zshrc.orig
3. Create a new zsh configuration file
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
4. Change your default shell
chsh -s $(which zsh)
You must log out from your user session…