Zsh And Oh My Zsh

Zsh is the interactive shell used by the terminal. Oh My Zsh manages the prompt, plugins, and theme conventions used by this setup.

Official Resources

Resource	URL
Zsh	zsh.org
Oh My Zsh	ohmyz.sh
zsh-autosuggestions	github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions

What It Is Used For Here

Use	Notes
Prompt	Uses Oh My Zsh robbyrussell with the prompt arrow replaced by 👼.
History	Shares shell history across tabs and sessions.
Suggestions	Enables zsh-autosuggestions when the plugin is installed.
Local commands	Adds ~/.local/bin to PATH so commands like tmux-dev work anywhere.
Local overrides	Loads ~/.zshrc.local for machine-specific config that should not be committed.

Install Oh My Zsh

The tracked zsh/.zshrc is portable. It contains only shell behavior that should be shared between machines.

Install Oh My Zsh manually:

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

Install zsh-autosuggestions:

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

Then install the zsh config:

cd ~/.config/dotfiles
bin/dotfiles-install zsh
source ~/.zshrc

The interactive bootstrap can also install Oh My Zsh and zsh-autosuggestions for you:

~/.config/dotfiles/bin/bootstrap zsh

Before installing this package on a machine that already has a large .zshrc, move machine-specific exports and generated tool paths to ~/.zshrc.local. The installer backs up the existing .zshrc, but the tracked config should stay portable.

Prompt Icon

The prompt icon is controlled by this line in zsh/.zshrc:

PROMPT="${PROMPT//➜/👼}"

The robbyrussell theme normally renders ➜. This line keeps the rest of the theme unchanged and only replaces that symbol.

To use a different icon, replace 👼 with another symbol:

PROMPT="${PROMPT//➜/❯}"

After changing it, reload the shell:

source ~/.zshrc

If the prompt does not change, open a new terminal tab or check that ~/.zshrc points to the repo:

ls -la ~/.zshrc

Local Configuration

Keep machine-specific configuration in ~/.zshrc.local:

export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/Library/Android/sdk"
export PATH="$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:$PATH"

That file is intentionally not managed by this repo.

Examples of values that belong in ~/.zshrc.local:

SDK paths
work credentials
machine-specific aliases
tool-generated PATH entries
private tokens