Useful ZSH Plugins

Using the terminal today is almost essential, especially if you want to be fast and efficient when it comes to using your computer and executing commands. Wherever possible, I like to keep my tooling simple and effective so I can focus on the task at hand.

My current shell of choice is ZSH (specifically; oh-my-zsh), which is highly customizable and extensible. There are many plugins available that can enhance your ZSH experience and boost your productivity and here are some useful ZSH plugins that I find help maximize my terminal experience for not a lot of effort.

I am aware there are many other shells and plugins and would really like to try something like Fish, but I’m too busy with other priorities right now. With that out the way, here are some of my favorite ZSH plugins that I believe offer a lot of value for minimal amount of effort and configuration.

Git

Comes by default with oh-my-zsh, it’s a really great default! This plugin provides a set of aliases and functions for working with Git. It simplifies many common Git commands and makes it easier to work with Git repositories directly from the terminal. For example, instead of typing git status, you can simply type gst. Here are some other examples of the aliases provided by the Git plugin:

# Examples!
gst # git status
gaa # git add all
gc -m "foo!" # git commit with message

Like many tools I often find a good way to learn is to need it. What I mean by this is if you are aware of a tool, install it and try some of the “porcelain” commands like gst, ga, gc, etc. and then try to expand on the commands as and when you need them. Initially this will absolutely slow you down, but it’s a compound investment that means you’ll get that time back and learn more about the tool. Sure, it’s possibly a slower way to use it in order to learn it, but I find I get more out of it and learn better when I actually need something, rather than reading the docs and trying to remember and recall everything. I’ve wasted many hours in the past reading all the commands etc only to need to go look them up again once I’ve come to need it, so save that initial effort and use the high level stuff and look the others up as you need to.

You can also find a full list of aliases in the oh-my-zsh Git Cheat Sheet.

ZSH Autosuggestions

ZSH Autosuggestions does what it says on the tin. It suggests commands as you type based on your command history and completions. This can significantly speed up your workflow by reducing the amount of typing you need to do!

To complete, simply press the right arrow key to accept the suggestion, or continue typing to ignore it.

ZSH Syntax Highlighting

ZSH Syntax Highlighting provides syntax highlighting for your command line input, making it easier to spot errors and understand the structure of your commands. It highlights commands as you type, which can help you catch mistakes before you run them.

For example, if you type a valid command, it will be highlighted in green, while an invalid command will be highlighted in red. This visual feedback can help you avoid common mistakes and improve your command line experience.

Atuin

Your command history is a valuable resource, Atuin is a tool that helps you manage that history. Think of it as a better version of the default history when you use control + r. It provides a rich featureset that allows you to search, filter, and replay your command history, making it easier to find and reuse commands you’ve run in the past. I was pretty good at using the stock history, hitting control + r multiple times and searching for commands, but Atuin has changed the way I use it and I find it much more useful.

Atuin works by storing your command history in a SQLite database, which can be synced across devices using a cloud storage provider like Dropbox or Google Drive, but this is a purely optional feature.

It’s very easy to configure, simply create a file at ~/.config/atuin/config.toml and you are off and running. Some config options I really like include:

filter_mode_shell_up_key_binding = "directory"

This one means when I use the up arrow key, it will filter the history by the current directory, which is super useful when you are working in a specific directory and want to find commands related to that directory.

A bunch of things I like to filter out of my history include:

history_filter = [
   "^secret-cmd",
   "^innocuous-cmd .*--secret=.+",
   "^ls",
   "^cd",
   "^j ",
   "^git ",
   "^clear$",
   "^exit$",
   "^cl$",
]

An important point to note is that after you’ve chosen to remove something, you’ll need to run atuin history prune to remove them from the SQLite database.

This is so I don’t see tons of entries of commands I don’t care about, like ls, cd, clear, etc.

You can either press tab from the list to add an entry to then adjust or run it, or you can press enter to run the command directly. I find this super useful when I want to run a command I used before, but I want to adjust it.

Another cool trick I leared is if you accidentally run a failing command, you can remove it from your history. With an entry from search highlighted, you can press control + a followed by d. You don’t have to do this, but I get ocd at times with things on my system so I personally like this one.

AutoJump

I was going to wrap things up there but I’ve recently started using autojump and things it’s definitely worth mentioning. AutoJump learns as you navigate your system. So rather than constantly running something like

cd ~/Documents/Projects/SomeProject

you can instead run;

j SomeProject

Say we have another project we’ve been working on called AnotherProject, and we’ve navigated to that directory, we can run j AnotherProject and it will jump to that directory, no matter where we are in the filesystem! That’s pretty neat if you have to keep navigating various directories and the time saved is definitely starting to add up!

And that’s it for my current favorite ZSH plugins and tools, I hope you find this useful or this has inspired you to visit your own tooling setup!