OMZ Plugins

I’m a huge fan of the oh-my-zsh plugin manager for zsh and I can’t say enough good things about it, but I’ll come back to that.

In the meantime, let’s talk about all my must-have plugins.

plugins=(
    aliases
    autojump
    brew
    colored-man-pages
    copybuffer
    copyfile
    docker
    docker-compose
    dirhistory
    git
    git-extra-commands
    golang
    kubectl
    macos
    ripgrep
    sudo
    vscode
    zsh-autosuggestions
)

Aliases

I don’t actually remember where I learned about this one, but it’s a real-time cheat sheet for, you guessed it, your aliases. You give it a search string and it’ll tell you the alises for it and where they came from.

Type: acs <search term>

$ acs merge
[_default]
	mergepdf = gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=_merged.pdf

[git]
	gbda = git branch --no-color --merged | command grep -vE "^([+*]|\s*($(git_main_branch)|$(git_develop_branch))\s*$)" | command xargs git branch -d 2>/dev/null
	gbnm = git branch --no-merged
	gm = git merge
	gma = git merge --abort
	gmom = git merge origin/$(git_main_branch)
	gmtl = git mergetool --no-prompt
	gmtlvim = git mergetool --no-prompt --tool=vimdiff
	gmum = git merge upstream/$(git_main_branch)

Autojump

This is CD with a memory. You visit a path way down in some monorepo, and to get back to it it’s just j <directory name portion>.

I’ve written about this one before.

Brew

Don’t memorize all the options and subcommands for brew, just use this and embrace the bubu which expands to:

brew update && brew outdated && brew upgrade && brew cleanup

Pro tip: You won’t be able to use your machine for a bit while it’s doing that.

Colored Man Pages

I mean, they’re colored man pages.

Copybuffer

This one’s a lot of fun. After you have a command typed out, use Ctrl+O to copy it. This is great for documentation and just handing off complicated commands to someone else.

Copyfile

Better than cat filename | pbcopy because you don’t have to worry about the control characters getting lost in the mix.

Docker & Docker Compose

Just aliases for these. Nothing to see here.

Macos

Some surprisingly useful ones here for interacting with the Finder at minimum.

| :------------ | :------------------------------------------------------- |
| `tab`         | Open the current directory in a new tab                  |
| `split_tab`   | Split the current terminal tab horizontally              |
| `vsplit_tab`  | Split the current terminal tab vertically                |
| `ofd`         | Open the current directory in a Finder window            |
| `pfd`         | Return the path of the frontmost Finder window           |
| `pfs`         | Return the current Finder selection                      |
| `cdf`         | `cd` to the current Finder directory                     |
| `pushdf`      | `pushd` to the current Finder directory                  |
| `pxd`         | Return the current Xcode project directory               |
| `cdx`         | `cd` to the current Xcode project directory              |
| `quick-look`  | Quick-Look a specified file                              |
| `man-preview` | Open a specified man page in Preview app                 |
| `showfiles`   | Show hidden files in Finder                              |
| `hidefiles`   | Hide the hidden files in Finder                          |
| `itunes`      | _DEPRECATED_. Use `music` from macOS Catalina on         |
| `music`       | Control Apple Music. Use `music -h` for usage details    |
| `spotify`     | Control Spotify and search by artist, album, track…      |
| `rmdsstore`   | Remove .DS_Store files recursively in a directory        |
| `btrestart`   | Restart the Bluetooth daemon                             |
| `freespace`   | Erases purgeable disk space with 0s on the selected disk |

VSCode

I didn’t use this for the longest time and then I read about it on a blog. The one I use most often is vsc which starts a fresh instance in the directory I’m in. I had previously aliased it to c. which just confused people who would watch screencasts of my work. I’d rather not confuse people.