Fish-like autosuggestions in zsh

I used Fish for a while because of its amazing autosuggestions. Something similar can be achieved in zsh, with some plugins and a little bit of configuration.

• zsh-syntax-highlighting highlights commands while they are typed, so you can quickly spot syntax errors.

• zsh-autosuggestions automatically suggests completions while you’re typing.

• zsh-history-substring-search allows you to type part of a command you’ve used before and use the arrow keys to scroll through history to find it.

I use Antigen to install zsh plugins, so I need to add the plugins to my ~/.zshrc file:

antigen bundle zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting
antigen bundle zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions
antigen bundle zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search

After that, bind the up and down arrow keys to history-substring-search-up and history-substring-search-down:

bindkey '^[[A' history-substring-search-up
bindkey '^[[B' history-substring-search-down

Lastly, to prevent duplicate commands in the history file, set histignoredups:

setopt histignoredups

Remap Caps Lock and increase keyboard speed

I use Seil to remap my Caps Lock key to escape.

If you don’t want to install Seil, you can also remap your Caps Lock key to ⌃ , ⌥ or ⌘ (or disable it altogether) in System Preferences ( › System Preferences… › Keyboard › Modifier Keys…).

The key repeat speed can also be changed in System Preferences, or from the command line:

$ defaults write -g InitialKeyRepeat -int 15 # 250ms
$ defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 2 #33ms

Disable ⌘S, ⌘W and ⌘Q in Terminal.app

I remapped three shortcut keys to ensure I don’t accidentally save terminal output or close a window in Terminal.app:

• ⌃⌘S instead of ⌘S to “Export Text As…”

• ⌃⌘W instead of ⌘W to “Close Window”

• ⌃⌘Q instead of ⌘Q to “Quit Terminal”

Instead of using System Preferences, you can quickly set these up using defaults from the command line:

$ defaults write -app Terminal NSUserKeyEquivalents '{
  "Export Text As..." = "@^S";
  "Close Window"      = "@^W";
  "Quit Terminal"     = "@^Q";
}'

Minimal configuration for Terminal.app

The default settings in Terminal.app are quite sensible, so there are just three things I set up:

• I use Inconsolata as my typeface instead of Menlo.

• For readability, I increased the font size to 16pt and set the line spacing to 1.25.

• I turned off the (visual) bells, badges, and app icon bouncing.

I exported the profile and keep it in my dotfiles to make it easy to set up. To use it, install Inconsolata and open Basic+.terminal in Terminal.app.