Zsh Autosuggestions A beginner's guide for setting up autocomplete on OhMyZsh & Hyper with plugins & themes!

Your normal bash might have functions you normally need, but if you are a regular terminal user, zsh will be changing the way you type commands.

Features that zsh, ohmyzsh and hyper together provide will simply blow your mind.

Did you know you can control Spotify from your terminal? Yes, Hyper Plugins allow you to do that.

Setting up this stuff can be overwhelming for a beginner, so here's a very simple guide to get started! 🤩

🔥 Introduction

If you are using a regular terminal like what you see below, you are missing a lot of features that OhMyZsh provides.

Today, you'll be doing a terminal makeover to make it look like this...

Not just the looks, but OhMyZsh comes with ample of features to lighten up your programming journey.

At the end of the tutorial, this is what you would be able to do in your terminal...

• NPM, Git autocomplete
• Auto Suggestions while you type in the terminal
• Syntax Highlighting that tells if a command is defined
• Use the cursor to edit the terminal command
• See git branch and git status of the current directory
• Open new tabs with the same directory as the current tab
• Use OhMyZsh features like navigating without using cd, usage of ll, easier tab-click based navigation, and much more!

❤️ Get Started

First, you have to install zsh. In some cases (depends on the OS you are running), it would already be installed. Therefore, check if it's installed by running zsh --version in your terminal.

The installation process for zsh is different in different Operating Systems. Checkout the Zsh Installation Guide to install zsh.

After you install Zsh, make sure you make it your default shell. Run the following in your terminal to do so.

$ sudo chsh -s $(which zsh)

Log out and Log in back to your default shell. Run echo $SHELL and the output /bin/zsh or similar is expected.

🔰 Installing OhMyZsh

Note that zsh and OhMyZsh are different.

Install OhMyZsh by running the following command in terminal.

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

When you install OhMyZsh, many plugins come with it for your rescue!

To add useful plugins, Open ~/.zshrc in TextEdit/Notepad/Vim/VSCode.

In the list of plugins that you see in the file, just add a plugin named npm, like this 👇

plugins=(
  git
  bundler
  dotenv
  osx
  rake
  rbenv
  ruby
  npm # you added this
)

Voila! You are done with OhMyZsh! To see the changes, run source ~/.zshrc in the terminal, and now you have the features of an OhMyZsh shell.

🔰 Installing HyperTerm by Zeit

Zeit (the creator of now.sh and Next.js) has created an awesome terminal app for us that is built in Electron.

Download Hyper from here.

⚛️ Configure Hyper with OhMyZsh

Open Hyper Terminal. You won't see OhMyZsh running there. So, go to Hyper Settings. On OSX, it's Hyper > Preferences.

That would open a .hyper.js file in your favorite editor. This file contains all the settings of your terminal that are super easy to control!

To enable OhMyZsh as a default shell in Hyper, make this change in .hyper.js 👇

- shell: '/bin/bash'
+ shell: '/bin/zsh'

And that would make OhMyZsh your default Hyper Terminal shell!

🤩 Autocomplete while you type a command

Git Clone the zsh-autocomplete plugin in the OhMyZsh plugin folder.

$ sudo git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

Once that is done, add the plugin in the ~/.zshrc file's plugin list.

plugins=(
  ...
  zsh-autosuggestions
)

🎉 Zsh sytax highlighting

Git Clone the zsh-syntax-highlighting plugin in the OhMyZsh plugin folder.

$ sudo git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting

And once again add it in the plugins list of the .zshrc file.

plugins=(
  ... 
  zsh-syntax-highlighting
)

Note: To reflect every change you make, do source ~/.zshrc in the terminal.

📯 Enabling Hyper related features and themes

Open .hyper.js by toggling Settings of Hyper Terminal.

Check out the plugins: [...] section and paste these plugin names there.

plugins: [
  ...
  'hypercwd',
  'hyper-statusline',
  'hyper-alt-click',
  'hyperterm-safepaste',
  'hyper-search',
  'hypergoogle',
  'hyperborder',
  'hyper-tab-icons',
  'hyper-hide-title',
  'shades-of-purple-hyper'
],

Save the file and Hyper would automatically install those plugins and themes for you. To reflect the changes, just close and start Hyper Terminal again.

Hooray! You now have all the features in your terminal which were listed in the start of this DEV.to article.

BONUS: Setting up the same terminal configuration for Integrated Terminal in VSCode

In the VSCode Settings, add the following JSON key-value pairs and you'll be good to go!

{
  ...
  "terminal.integrated.shell.osx": "/bin/zsh",
  "terminal.integrated.fontSize": 16
}

And that is it folks!

🔥 Resources

• https://ohmyz.sh
• https://hyper.is

🏆 About me

I am Kumar Abhirup, a 16-year-old JavaScript React developer from India who keeps learning a new thing every single day.

Connect with me on Twitter 🐦
My personal website and portfolio 🖥️

Comment below your better ways, and suggestions to improve this article. :)