Zsh has given me so much mileage with respect to efficiency at the command line. Looking back I’m a little sad I didn’t switch to it sooner. One of the reasons why it took so long was that I didn’t know where to start; with this in mind, I’ve collected some of the zsh-specific bits of my dotfiles into one place to help people hit the ground running.

To cut to the chase, you can find my starter zshrc on GitHub. It contains usage information as well as loads of inline comments to give you a line-by-line summary.

Note: it’s an starter zshrc. What I mean by this is that it’s more of a skeleton. It’s been crafted with the assumption that you’re coming from bash and you already have some bash config that you’re weary to part with. The content here aims to be minimally invasive, and since zsh is largely compatible with bash, the rest of your config should fit right in.

Going Further

I have even more zsh-specific and general configuration nuggets in my personal dotfiles, which are also on GitHub. I add to them nearly every day, and I’m pretty fond of them if I do say so myself. You might want to read Noteworthy Dotfile Hacks if you’re looking for a quick overview of some snippets and features I’ve collected into my dotfiles.