My Terminal Setup in 2025

A fast, pretty terminal makes development more enjoyable. Here's my current setup.

The Stack

  • **Terminal**: iTerm2 (macOS)
  • **Shell**: zsh
  • **Prompt**: Starship
  • **Font**: JetBrains Mono Nerd Font
  • **Colors**: Catppuccin Mocha

Why This Combo

I've tried oh-my-zsh, Powerlevel10k, Fish. This setup is fast and minimal while still looking great.

Starship Prompt

Starship is written in Rust. It's fast.

Install:

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

Add to `.zshrc`:

eval "$(starship init zsh)"

My config (`~/.config/starship.toml`):

format = """
$directory$git_branch$git_status$nodejs$python
$character
"""

[directory]
truncation_length = 3
truncate_to_repo = true

[git_branch]
symbol = " "

[git_status]
conflicted = "⚠"
ahead = "⇡${count}"
behind = "⇣${count}"
diverged = "⇕"

[nodejs]
symbol = " "

[character]
success_symbol = "[❯](green)"
error_symbol = "[❯](red)"

Useful Zsh Aliases

# Git
alias gs="git status"
alias gc="git commit -m"
alias gp="git push"
alias gl="git log --oneline -10"

# Navigation
alias ..="cd .."
alias ...="cd ../.."
alias ll="ls -la"

# Development
alias nr="npm run"
alias nrd="npm run dev"
alias nrb="npm run build"

# Quick edits
alias zshrc="code ~/.zshrc"
alias reload="source ~/.zshrc"

Zsh Plugins (Manually)

I don't use oh-my-zsh. Just a few plugins:

zsh-autosuggestions

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ~/.zsh/zsh-autosuggestions
echo "source ~/.zsh/zsh-autosuggestions/zsh-autosuggestions.zsh" >> ~/.zshrc

zsh-syntax-highlighting

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting ~/.zsh/zsh-syntax-highlighting
echo "source ~/.zsh/zsh-syntax-highlighting/zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh" >> ~/.zshrc

Key Bindings

# Word navigation
bindkey "^[[1;3C" forward-word     # Alt+Right
bindkey "^[[1;3D" backward-word    # Alt+Left

# History search
bindkey "^[[A" history-search-backward
bindkey "^[[B" history-search-forward

The Result

A prompt that tells me:

  • Current directory
  • Git branch and status
  • Node version (when in a Node project)

And it's *fast*. No lag when opening new tabs.

Your terminal is where you spend hours every day. Make it nice.

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