llleonzhao
11/29/2016 - 2:00 PM

iTerm2 + Oh My Zsh + Solarized color scheme + Meslo powerline font (OS X / macOS)

iTerm2 + Oh My Zsh + Solarized color scheme + Meslo powerline font (OS X / macOS)

How to install

iTerm2

  • Download and install iTerm2 (it has better color fidelity than the built in Terminal).

Get the iTerm color settings

Just save it somewhere and open the file(s). The color settings will be imported into iTerm2. Apply them in iTerm through iTerm -> preferences -> profiles -> colors -> load presets. You can create a different profile other than Default if you wish to do so.

Oh My Zsh

More info here: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh

Install with curl

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

When the installation is done, edit ~/.zshrc and set ZSH_THEME="agnoster"

Install a patched font

Open the downloaded font and press "Install Font".

Set this font in iTerm2 (14px is my personal preference) (iTerm -> Preferences -> Profiles -> Text -> Change Font).

Restart iTerm2 for all changes to take effect.

Further tweaking

Things like

  • auto suggestions
  • word jumping with arrow keys
  • shorter prompt style
  • syntax highlighting

can be found in the section below.

Auto suggestions (for Oh My Zsh)

Just follow these steps: https://github.com/tarruda/zsh-autosuggestions#oh-my-zsh

If the auto suggestions do not appear to show, it could be a problem with your color scheme. Under "iTerm -> Preferences -> Colors tab", check the value of Black Bright, that is the color your auto suggestions will have. It will be displayed on top of the Background color, so if there is not enough contrast between the two, you won't see the suggestions, even if they're actually there.. For Solarized Dark I changed the value of Black Bright to "586e75".

Enable word jumps

By default, word jumps (option + → or ←) do not work. To enable these, go to "iTerm -> Preferences -> Profiles -> Keys". Press the + sign under the list of key mappings and add the following sequences:

Option + right

⌥→
Send Escape Sequence
f

Option + left

⌥←
Send Escape Sequence
b

Shorter prompt style

By default, your prompt will now show “user@hostname” in the prompt. This will make your prompt rather bloated. Optionally set DEFAULT_USER in ~/.zshrc to your regular username (these must match) to hide the “user@hostname” info when you’re logged in as yourself on your local machine. You can get your exact username value by executing whoami in the terminal.

Syntax highlighting

brew install zsh-syntax-highlighting

If you do not have or do not like homebrew, follow the installation instructions instead.

After installation through homebrew, add

source /usr/local/share/zsh-syntax-highlighting/zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh

to the end of your .zshrc file. After that, it's best to restart your terminal. Sourcing your ~/.zshrc does not seem to work well with this plugin.