As a developer, terminal is the second most important application used after IDE so it's important to keep it as personalized as possible. I like to keep it minimal looking but with the required functionality and helpful utilities

Install iTerm2

My preferred terminal is iterm2, it allows you to do a lot of customizations, for example, a floating terminal that can be triggered on any screen using a hotkey.

You can download iterm2 from the official iterm website or install it via Brew using the command

brew install --cask iterm2

Install Ohmyzsh

Ohmyzsh helps manage zsh configuration, it also comes with tons of themes, plugins, helpful functions, and more. Install it by running the below command

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

Now time to install useful plugins and themes to our terminal. I use the default "robbyrussell" theme but you can choose your favorite theme from here. To activate your theme you will have to

  • Open zshrc
vim ~/.zshrc
  • Find ZSH_THEME and replace robbyrussell with whatever you prefer
Install plugins

There are a lot of plugins you can install, this is made possible by ohmyzsh we previously installed. You can browse all the plugins from here, I use these

Shows suggestions when you start typing from your previous command history like below

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

# In zshrc file, add your plugin to list of plugins
plugins=( 
    # other plugins...
    zsh-autosuggestions
)

Highlights command syntax as you type, below is a screenshot from the official zsh-syntax-highlighting repo

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

# In zshrc file, add your plugin to list of plugins
plugins=( 
    # other plugins...
    zsh-syntax-highlighting
)

Conclusion

These plugins and themes should make your terminal look minimal and usable. But I would suggest browsing through the plugins & themes list and finding the ones that work best for you.