5 Plugins that can make your Terminal smarter
3 min readDec 21, 2018
As a developer, you work with Terminal everyday. You can obviously enjoy using a better Zsh shell with smarter selection, redirection, syntax colouring and listing by just a few plugins.
1. tree
Tree is a recursive directory listing command that produces a depth indented listing of files, which is colorized ala dircolors if the LS_COLORS environment variable is set and output is to tty.
$ brew install tree # installation### How to use
$ tree## Advanced Options
$ tree -C -L 2 -F -I 'node_modules'
# -C : colourized output
# -L : level(s) to be displayed
# -F : show folder(s) with '/'
# -I : ignore pattern
You can type
man treeto see more options
2. zsh-completions
Additional completion definitions for Zsh. (select by tab)
$ brew install zsh-completions # installation
3. autojump
A cd command that learns — easily navigate directories from the command line
$ brew install automjump # installationPut the following lines to ~/.zshrc.
[[ -s `brew --prefix`/etc/autojump.sh ]] && . `brew --prefix`/etc/autojump.sh### How to use$ j Desktop # jump to desktop pattern
$ jc ruby # jump limit to folders under current directory
$ jo ruby # jump to a folder and open it using default opener (e.g. Finder)
$ jco ruby # combination of jc and jo
4. zsh-syntax-highlighting
Fish shell like syntax highlighting for Zsh.
$ brew install zsh-syntax-highlighting # installation5. ccat
Colorizing `cat`.
$ brew install ccat # installation
You can type
ccat --helpto see more options
