Customizing shell on macOS

I use to develop on Linux systems, but I do from a VM, and I was wondering how to customize in similar way for zsh in macOS. If you want to set up a shell environment similar to Linux using powerline, this article is for you.

The contents are the below:

Installing "0xProto nerd fonts mono".
Custom prompt by using starship.

Pre-requisites: brew is installed in your system

Installing "0xProto nerd fonts mono"

This font or another font for developing is necessary to print out properly the prompt. Below are the steps to install the font in the system.

# Download font
curl -L -O "https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases/download/v3.4.0/0xProto.zip"

# unpack the fonts at 0xProto/ directory
unzip 0xProto.zip -d 0xProto

# Install the fonts in the system
cp -vf 0xProto/*.ttf ~/Library/Fonts

# Reboot if you don't see the new fonts

Additionally I added the font to my VSCode IDE, so the embedded terminal experience is the same as my system terminal.

Open the VSCode settings.
Select User tab.
Search for 'Text Editor > Font : Font Family'
Add at the beginning: "0xProto Nerd Font Mono"

Custom prompt by using starship

Install starship by: brew install starship
Configure your starship by: starship preset gruvbox-rainbow -o ~/.config/starship.toml
Now we want to make effective the prompt configuration so we add the below to our .zshrc file or similar. In my case I have .profile.d/starship.zsh that is included from the .zshrc file:

sh if command -v starship &>/dev/null; then if tty -s &>/dev/null; then source <(starship init zsh) fi fi

Finally, close your terminal, and re-open again, and you will see your prompt shell customized.

Wrap up!

To have a prompt that display useful information for the developer is important to avoid human mistakes, and already is cool to have a prompt shell that display such information.

Hope this help!

See you on the next article!