Managing your terminal configuration

Nikoleta E. Glynatsi · December 11, 2025

The first thing that you need to do is to identify which shell you are using the terminal. This tutorial is from the shell zsh. zsh is a vastly used shell and the default shell for Mac computers.

To see the shell you are using you need to run the command:

$ echo $SHELL

without the $. The symbol $ is to indicate that this command needs to be run in the terminal.

If your default shell is not zsh then run the command:

$ chsh -s /bin/zsh

Once you have run the command you need to restart (close and open) your terminal window.

Managing the zsh configuration

Navigate to your home directory by running:

$ cd

Here you want to have a file named .zshrc. See if you have the file by running ls -a. If you do not have the file fear not! We will create the file. The .zshrc is the file that keeps all the configurations of your shell.

We will use an open source called Oh My Zsh. It’s a framework for managing your zsh configuration. Run the following command (while again in your home) directory:

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

You already can notice difference in your terminal.

Themes

If you open the file .zshrc you will see the following line:

ZSH_THEME="robbyrussell"

This is the theme. Choose the theme that you prefer. See https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/wiki/Themes.

To see the new theme run:

$ source .zshrc

Autosuggestions

For autosuggestions run the command:

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

Then add the plugin to the list of plugins for Oh My Zsh to load (inside ~/.zshrc):

plugins=( 
    # other plugins...
    zsh-autosuggestions
)

Run:

$ source .zshrc

and now you have autosuggestions!

Editing .zshrc

To edit the file you can use any editor. If you are in the terminal I recommend the editor nano.

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