Zsh

Zsh is a powerful shell that operates as both an interactive shell and as a scripting language interpreter. While being compatible with the POSIX sh (not by default, only if issuing emulate sh), it offers advantages such as improved tab completion and globbing.

The Zsh FAQ offers more reasons to use Zsh.

Before starting, users may want to see what shell is currently being used:

Install the zsh package. For additional completion definitions, install the zsh-completions package as well.

Make sure that Zsh has been installed correctly by running the following in a terminal:

You should now see zsh-newuser-install, which will walk you through some basic configuration. If you want to skip this, press q. If you did not see it, you can invoke it manually with:

Change your shell to /usr/bin/zsh. See Command-line shell#Changing your default shell.

When starting, Zsh will read commands from the following files in this order by default, provided they exist.

See the graphic representation.

Although Zsh is usable out of the box, it is almost certainly not set up the way most users would like to use it. But due to the sheer amount of customization available in Zsh, configuring Zsh can be a daunting and time-consuming experience. For automatic configuration, see #Third-party extensions.

Included below is a sample configuration file. It provides a decent set of default options as well as giving examples of many ways that Zsh can be customized. In order to use this configuration save it as a file named .zshrc.

Here is a simple .zshrc:

See #Prompt themes for more details about the prompt theme system.

Zsh ties the PATH variable to a path array. This allows you to manipulate PATH by simply modifying the path array. See A User's Guide to the Z-Shell for details.

To add ~/.local/bin/ to the PATH:

Perhaps the most compelling feature of Zsh is its advanced autocompletion abilities. At the very least, enable autocompletion in .zshrc. To enable autocompletion, add the following to your ~/.zshrc:

The above configuration includes ssh/scp/sftp hostnames completion but in order for this feature to work, users must not enable ssh's hostname hashing (i.e. option HashKnownHosts in ssh client configuration).

For autocompletion with an arrow-key driven interface, add the following to:

To activate the menu, press Tab twice.

For enabling autocompletion of privileged environments in privileged commands (e.g. if you complete a command starting with sudo, completion scripts will also try to determine your completions with sudo), include:

Zsh does not use readline, instead it uses its own and more powerful Zsh Line Editor (ZLE). It does not read /etc/inputrc or ~/.inputrc. Read A closer look at the zsh line editor and creating custom widgets for an introduction to ZLE configuration.

ZLE has an Emacs mode and a vi mode. If one of the VISUAL or EDITOR environment variables contain the string vi then vi mode will be used; otherwise, it will default to Emacs mode. Set the mode explicitly with bindkey -e or bindkey -v respectively for Emacs mode or vi mode. The delay of pressing Esc key in vi mode is 0.4s by default, and you can make it shorter (0.05s) with export KEYTIMEOUT=5.

Key bindings are assigned by mapping an escape sequence matching a keypress to a ZLE widget. The available widgets, with descriptions of their actions and their default keybindings, are listed in zshzle(1) § STANDARD WIDGETS and zshcontrib(1) § ZLE FUNCTIONS.

The recommended way to set key bindings in Zsh is by using string capabilities from terminfo(5). For example[1][2]:

You need to set up the key array and make sure that ZLE enters application mode to use the following instructions; see #Key bindings.

To enable history search add these lines to .zshrc file:

By doing this, only the past commands matching the current line up to the current cursor position will be shown when Up or Down keys are pressed.

xterm-compatible terminals can use extended key-definitions from user_caps(5). Those are combinations of Shift, Alt, Ctrl and Meta together with Up, Down, Left, Right, PageUp, PageDown, Home, End or Del. Refer to the zkbd source for a list of recommended names for the modifier keys and key combinations.

For example, for Ctrl+Left to move to the beginning of the previous word and Ctrl+Right to move to the beginning of the next word:

Zsh offers the options of using a prompt theme or, for users who are dissatisfied with the themes (or want to expand their usefulness), the possibility to build a custom prompt.

Prompt themes are a quick and easy way to set up a colored prompt in Zsh. See zshcontrib(1) § PROMPT THEMES for information about prompt themes and how to write your own theme.

To use a theme, make sure that prompt theme system is set to autoload in .zshrc. This can be done by adding these lines to:

Available prompt themes are listed by running the command:

For example, to use the walters theme, enter:

To preview all available themes, use this command:

It is possible to install themes manually, without external configuration manager tools. For a local installation, first create a folder and add it to the fpath array, eg:

Now create a symbolic link of your theme file in this folder:

If instead you wish to install a theme globally, do:

Now you should be able to activate it using:

If everything works, you can edit your .zshrc accordingly.

In addition to adding a prompt theme through its own file, it is possible to add themes from within another file (like your .zshrc), eg:

Additionally to a primary left-sided prompt PS1 (PROMPT, prompt) that is common to all shells, Zsh also supports a right-sided prompt RPS1 (RPROMPT). These two variables are the ones you will want to set to a custom value.

Other special purpose prompts, such as PS2 (PROMPT2), PS3 (PROMPT3), PS4 (PROMPT4), RPS1 (RPROMPT), RPS2 (RPROMPT2) and SPROMPT, are explained in zshparam(1) § PARAMETERS USED BY THE SHELL.

All prompts can be customized with prompt escapes. The available prompt escapes are listed in zshmisc(1) § EXPANSION OF PROMPT SEQUENCES.

Zsh sets colors differently than Bash; You do not need to use profuse ANSI escape sequences or terminal capabilities from terminfo(5). Zsh provides convenient prompt escapes to set the foreground color, background color and other visual effects; see zshmisc(1) § Visual effects for a list of them and their descriptions.

Colors can be specified using a decimal integer, the name of one of the eight most widely-supported colors or as a # followed by an RGB triplet in hexadecimal format. See the description of fg=colour in zshzle(1) § CHARACTER HIGHLIGHTING for more details.

Most terminals support the following colors by name:

Color numbers 0–255 for terminal emulators compatible with xterm 256 colors can be found in the xterm-256color chart.

With a correctly set TERM environment variable, the terminal's supported maximum number of colors can be found from the terminfo(5) database using echoti colors. In the case of 24-bit colors, also check the COLORTERM environment variable with print $COLORTERM. If it returns 24bit or truecolor then your terminal supports 16777216 (224) colors even if terminfo shows a smaller number.

An example of a simple colorless prompt:

How it will be displayed:

This is an example of a two-sided prompt with color:

And here is how it will be displayed:

To use colors from the 16-255 range and 24-bit true color, you can use the number from 0 to 255 assigned to the wanted color and its hexadecimal color code, respectively:

See dotfiles#User repositories for more.

See xinit#Autostart X at login.

Many programs change the terminal state, and often do not restore terminal settings on exiting abnormally (e.g. when crashing or encountering SIGINT).

This can typically be solved by executing reset(1):

The following sections describe ways to avoid the need to manually reset the terminal.

The ttyctl command can be used to "freeze/unfreeze" the terminal. To freeze the interactive shell on launch, use the following:

Alternate linedrawing character set can screw up the terminal in a way which ttyctl cannot prevent.

A simple solution is to output the escape sequences that reset the terminal from the precmd hook function, so that they are executed every time before the prompt is drawn. For example, using the escape sequence \e[0m\e(B\e)0\017\e[?5l\e7\e[0;0r\e8:

To test if it works, run:

Zsh can be configured to remember the DIRSTACKSIZE last visited folders. This can then be used to cd them very quickly. You need to add some lines to your configuration file:

Now use

to print the dirstack. Use cd - to go back to a visited folder. Use autocompletion after the dash. This proves very handy if using the autocompletion menu.

cdr allows you to change the working directory to a previous working directory from a list maintained automatically. It stores all entries in files that are maintained across sessions and (by default) between terminal emulators in the current session.

See zshcontrib(1) § REMEMBERING RECENT DIRECTORIES for setup instructions.

zoxide is a smarter cd command that lets you navigate anywhere in just a few keystrokes. It remembers your frequently used directories and uses a scoring mechanism to guess where you want to go.

Unlike Bash, Zsh does not enable a built in help command, instead it provides run-help. By default run-help is an alias to man, it can be either executed manually by prepending it to a command or it can be invoked for the currently typed command with the keyboard shortcuts Alt+h or Esc h.

Since by default it is just an alias to man, it will only work on external commands. To improve its functionality, so that it works on shell builtins and other shell features, you need to use the run-help function. See zshcontrib(1) for more information on the run-help and its assistant functions.

First load the run-help function and then remove the existing run-help alias. For convenience help can be aliased to run-help. For example, add following to your zshrc:

Assistant functions have to be enabled separately:

For example, run-help git commit command will now open the man page git-commit(1) instead of git(1).

Typically, compinit will not automatically find new executables in the $PATH. For example, after you install a new package, the files in /usr/bin/ would not be immediately or automatically included in the completion. Thus, to have these new executables included, one would run:

This 'rehash' can be set to happen automatically.[3] Simply include the following in your zshrc:

As above, however pacman can be configured with hooks to automatically request a rehash, which does not incur the performance penalty of constant rehashing as above. To enable this, create the /etc/pacman.d/hooks directory, and a /var/cache/zsh directory, then create a hook file:

This keeps the modification date of the file /var/cache/zsh/pacman consistent with the last time a package was installed, upgraded or removed. Then, zsh must be coaxed into rehashing its own command cache when it goes out of date, by adding to your ~/.zshrc:

If the precmd hook is triggered before /var/cache/zsh/pacman is updated, completion may not work until a new prompt is initiated. Running an empty command, e.g. pressing enter, should be sufficient.

As above, however the hook file looks like this:

The function trap above can be replaced with a list trap trap 'rehash' USR1. See zshmisc(1) § Trap Functions for differences between types of traps.

This method will instantly rehash all zsh instances, removing the need to press enter to trigger precmd.

Bind a ncurses application to a keystroke, but it will not accept interaction. Use BUFFER variable to make it work. The following example lets users open ncmpcpp using Alt+\:

An alternate method, that will keep everything you entered in the line before calling application: