Terminal Setup Worth Copying

A developer's terminal is their most-used tool. Here's what a solid setup looks like — themes, prompts, and a few commands that make daily work noticeably smoother.

The full reference lives in Terminal Commands and Terminal Themes, but this post is the opinionated "here's what I actually use" version.

Shell: Oh My Zsh + Starship

Oh My Zsh is the plugin ecosystem. Starship is the cross-shell prompt. Together they cover 90% of what you need.

# Install Oh My Zsh
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

# Install Starship
curl -sS https://starship.rs/install.sh | sh

Starship's prompt is fast, shows git branch/status, language versions (Node, Python, Rust), and works identically on macOS, Linux, and WSL.

Three Plugins That Change Daily Use

# Add to plugins=() in ~/.zshrc
plugins=(git zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-highlighting)

• git — adds 60+ git aliases (gst for status, gco for checkout, gcmsg for commit -m, etc.)
• zsh-autosuggestions — grey completions from history, accept with →
• zsh-syntax-highlighting — commands turn green when valid, red when not

One Alias to Rule Them All

# ~/.zshrc
alias dev="cd ~/code && ls"

Simple. Works. Change the path to wherever your projects live.

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The Terminal Commands resource page has a broader reference — git tricks, file navigation, process management, and more.