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What is the best .zshrc config you have seen?

Manan Joshi on November 12, 2019

I was editing my .zshrc the other day and wondered what cool things people are doing with it. Here's my config # Created by manan for 4.4.2 #C...

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Tommy Kolkman • Nov 13 '19

I've always liked adding this little snippet to my .zshrc:

sourceZsh(){
    source ~/.zshrc
    backupToDrive ~/.zshrc
    echo "New .zshrc sourced."
}

editZsh(){
    nano ~/.zshrc
    source ~/.zshrc
    backupToDrive ~/.zshrc
    echo "New .zshrc sourced."
}

backupToDrive(){
    cp "$1" /Users/<username>/Google\ Drive/Config/.zshrc
    echo "New .zshrc backed up to Google Drive."
}

So just use editZsh to edit your .zshrc and it will be safe!

When switching machines, I only have to get my .zshrc from the Drive and here we go again.

Manan Joshi • Nov 13 '19

Hey Tommy, I actually use yadm to manage my dotfiles. They are then pushed on to GitHub here. So whenever I want to set up a new machine the only thing I need to do is just clone that repo.

b2aff6009 • Nov 15 '19

Thanks for sharing. I improved my .zshrc a lot since I saw this post. As I use my .zshrc on different machines I implemented an update before the edit.
And as I search for quite often for some strings inside of files I wrote a "find in files" function

alias findr='\fd'
#function for find strings in files
fif() {
    findr --type f $1|xargs grep -n -i  $2
}

sourceZsh(){
    source ~/.zshrc
    backupToDrive ~/.zshrc
    echo "New .zshrc sourced."
}

editZsh(){
    updateYadm
    vim ~/.zshrc
    source ~/.zshrc
    backupToDrive ~/.zshrc
    echo "New .zshrc sourced."
}

updateYadm() {
    yadm pull
}

backupToDrive(){
    yadm add ~/.zshrc
    yadm commit -m "updated .zshrc"
    yadm push
    echo "New .zshrc backed up to yadm."
}

AlexisFinn • Nov 19 '19

Nice, I usually just version my entire Home directory, the process being to first add a .gitignore with * so that by default everything is ignored, and then I can force-add whatever I want to version (remember gitignore doesn't apply to anything that is already versioned).
That way I can also version my fonts folder, background-images folder and whatnot.

Luis Martinez Suarez • Nov 20 '19

Duh.... that is a great idea!!

Tommy Kolkman • Nov 13 '19

D'oh! I should've known something like this exists - I'm gonna dive into that, thanks!

Heiker • Nov 12 '19 • Edited

I think most people just install oh-my-zsh and forget about .zshrc. Is what I did at first. So I think the first place to look is the oh-my-zsh repository, they have some really useful stuff in the plugins folder.

This are my favorite.

# Use - to go back to previous directory
alias -- -='cd -'

# Taken from the tmux plugin
alias ta="tmux attach -t"
alias ts="tmux new-session -s"
alias tl="tmux list-sessions"

# Keybindings

autoload -U up-line-or-beginning-search
autoload -U down-line-or-beginning-search

# [Space] - do history expansion
bindkey ' ' magic-space

# start typing + [Up-Arrow] - fuzzy find history forward
bindkey "${terminfo[kcuu1]}" up-line-or-beginning-search

# start typing + [Down-Arrow] - fuzzy find history backward
bindkey "${terminfo[kcud1]}" down-line-or-beginning-search

They do a little bit of magic in another file to make sure terminfo has a value.

I actually uninstalled oh-my-zsh and kept what I needed. The zsh specific stuff is here. And what is (mostly) POSIX compliant is here.

Manan Joshi • Nov 12 '19

I 100% agree with this I think most people just install oh-my-zsh and forget about .zshrc.

José Landero • Nov 13 '19

I was one of those until today, I'd never thought about how handy could be to have some aliases here and there

Manan Joshi • Nov 13 '19

I am not 100% certain if aliasing actually saves some time but it sure does save you some keyboard clicks.

Gergely Polonkai • Nov 19 '19

I use fish.

But before i switched, i used a plain oh-my-zsh with some plugins made by myself. I really liked it, and occasionally miss it. However, despite a few quirks, i don’t regret switching to fish for my interactive sessions; scripting is still better in good old bash or, if portability is a must, plain sh.

Manuele J Sarfatti • Nov 12 '19

I love your react-app shortcut!

Manan Joshi • Nov 12 '19

Thanks a lot

Roman Perepelitsa • Nov 13 '19

FYI: There is powerlevel10k now.

AlexisFinn • Nov 19 '19

Nice, but why ? The project says it's a drop-in replacement for powerlevel9k but then why not just use the original ? It's still active as far as I know so is there some sort of issue why I would want to use the replacement ?
This is an honest question, and if the answer turns out to be why-not, well I'm down with that answer as well, after all that's the beauty of open-source.

Roman Perepelitsa • Nov 19 '19

The project says it's a drop-in replacement for powerlevel9k

Not quite. Here's what it says:

Powerlevel10k can be used as a fast drop-in replacement for Powerlevel9k.

Fast: Powerlevel10k is over 10 times faster than powerlevel9k when using the same configuration options.
Can be used as a drop-in replacement rater than is a drop-in replacement: Powerlevel10k has many extra features not found in Powerlevel9k.

[powerlevel9k is] still active as far as I know

I guess this depends on one's point of view. Commit activity graph shows last commit in March.

AlexisFinn • Nov 19 '19

Cool. Thanks for the quick reply and insight on the differences between the two projects.
I'm quite a sucker for 'fast' and lightweight, so now I'm going to have to try it.

Louis • Nov 13 '19

It would be very cool to see what your terminal looks like! Could you attach a screenshot that shows the result of your configs?

Manan Joshi • Nov 13 '19

Sure Louis here it is.