iTerm2

iTerm2 is an open source replacement for Apple's Terminal. It's highly customizable and comes with a lot of useful features.

The Ultimate Guide to Your Terminal Makeover

iterm2

Prerequisites

Fonts should be installed as described in Essentials section.

Install

# if you haven't already installed iterm2, run:
brew install --cask --appdir=~/Applications iterm2

Customization

From iTerm2 Menu, select:

1. Make iTerm2 Default Term

2. Install Shell Integration - Select Download and Run Installer

   1. Or, run curl -L https://iterm2.com/shell_integration/install_shell_integration_and_utilities.sh | zsh

Appearance

Follow the screenshots and apply settings as shown:

iterm-general-startup

iterm-general-closing

iterm-appearance-general

iterm-profiles-window

Go into Preferences and uncheck the indicators: Profiles > Terminal > Show mark indicators. It will conflict with our starship prompt.

iterm-profiles-terminal

iterm-profiles-session

Click Configure Status Bar button, and then Advanced button enable iterm2 Session Restoration

iterm-profiles-session-statusbar-advanced

iterm-profiles-session-statusbar

Add kubecontext Status Bar component

• iTerm2 > Preferences > Profiles > Session > Configure Status Bar

• Drag a new Interpolated String component to Active Components.

• Select the new component and click Configure Component.

• Set String Value to \(user.kubecontext)

iterm-profiles-session-statusbar-expression

Shortcut Keys

Under Preferences → Profile → ("Default") → Keys → Key Mappings: Click the Presets dropdown and select Natural Text Editing. When prompted: Load Preset click Remove button.

iterm-profiles-keys

Colors and Fonts

Under Preference → Profile → Default → Colors → Color Presets: Install Color Preset: Download Clovis-iTerm2-Color-Scheme or one-dark file to ~/Downloads folder, import the .itermcolors file, then select the Clovis-iTerm2-Color-Scheme preset you just installed.

you have to rename ~/Downloads/Clovis-iTerm2-Color-Scheme.txt file to ~/Downloads/Clovis-iTerm2-Color-Scheme.itermcolors before importing.

iterm-profiles-colors

Note

Some iTerm2 users have reported not being able to see the suggestions If this affects you, the problem is likely caused by incorrect color settings for Dark Theme. In order to correct this, go into iTerm2's setting, navigate to Preference → Profile → Default → Colors, and make sure that the colors for Basic Colors → Background and ANSI Colors → Black: Bright are different.

From Preference → Profile → Default → Colors, Adjust Black Bright under ANSI colors:

iterm-profiles-colors-adjust

Under Preference → Profile → Default → Text: Select Font: Meslo LGM Nerd Font Mono, FiraCode Nerd Font Mono Or Hack Nerd Font Mono and Check Use ligatures

iterm-profiles-text

Working Directory

Under Preferences → Profiles → General → Working Directory → Advanced Configuration, set:

iterm-working-directory

Extensions

Prompt

We will be using starship for prompt.

brew install starship
# after install, run:
echo 'eval "$(starship init zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc

You can further configure Prompt by editing ~/.config/starship.toml. We provide Preset starship.toml with some cool icons and kubecontext enabled.

Usage:

starship explain # Explains the currently showing modules
starship module golang # Prints a specific prompt module
starship print-config # Prints the computed starship configuration

ls & ll

We will be replacing ls with eza Features: Colours, Grid view, Long view, Tree view, Git integration, Filtering and Icons Note: The icon characters must be present in the font you are using in your terminal

brew install eza

Usage:

eza --long --header --group --git

We also added following alias to our alias file, which is sourced from ~/.zshrc

alias ls='eza  --header --group --git --long'
alias ls.tree='eza --header --group --tree --level=2  --git --long --icons'

alias ll='eza --header --group --long --all'
alias ll.tree='eza --header --group --tree --level=2  --git --long --icons --all'

Shell Completions

We will be installing zsh-completions , zsh-autosuggestions and zsh-syntax-highlighting

brew install zsh-completions
# To opt-in to using completions for external commands
brew completions link
# You may also need to force rebuild `zcompdump`:
rm -f ~/.zcompdump; compinit
# Additionally, if you receive "zsh compinit: insecure directories" warnings when attempting to load these completions, you may need to run this:
chmod -R go-w $(brew --prefix)/share/zsh
compaudit | xargs chmod g-w
# install zsh-autosuggestions
brew install zsh-autosuggestions
source $(brew --prefix)/share/zsh-autosuggestions/zsh-autosuggestions.zsh
# install zsh-syntax-highlighting
brew install zsh-syntax-highlighting
source $(brew --prefix)/share/zsh-syntax-highlighting/zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh

Search previous used commands using Arrows

Arrows	Result
↑ ↓	History Search
^ i	Completion Search
⌥ + ← →	Jump Word
⌘ + ← →	Jump line beginning / end

Add following to ~/.zshrc

Search Previous Used Commands using arrows. up and down arrows - history search

autoload -U history-search-end
zle -N history-beginning-search-backward-end history-search-end
zle -N history-beginning-search-forward-end history-search-end
bindkey "^[[A" history-beginning-search-backward-end
bindkey "^[[B" history-beginning-search-forward-end

iTerm2 More

iTerm2 setup for day-to-day use

in iTerm2

1. split screen horizontally

2. go to the bottom screen and split it vertically

I was using top screen for the work with yaml files and kubectl.

Left bottom screen was running:

watch kubectl get pods

Right bottom screen was running:

watch "kubectl get events --sort-by='{.lastTimestamp}' | tail -6"

With such setup it was easy to observe in real time how my pods are being created.

Hints

• Order of shell expectation ~/.zprofile then ~/.zshrc