Ultimate Mac drop-down Quake-style terminal setup

Below steps are supporting a YouTube video

1. Install text editor

I prefer Visual Studio Code. Download and install on your machine from the official web-site

2. Create a .zshrc file

Look for .zshrc file in your home directory.

Note

make sure to display hidden files with cmd+shift+. command. If you don't have .zshrc file in your home directory, create it with touch command in terminal.

touch ~/.zshrc

3. Install xcode developer tools.

Required step for anything related to programming.

xcode-select --install

4. Install homebrew

So-called missing package manager for MacOS or linux systems. It is just a convenient way to install many different development packages onto your machine.

For ARM macs

cd ~/Downloads
mkdir homebrew
curl -L https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C homebrew
sudo mv homebrew /opt/homebrew
export PATH="/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH"

For intel macs

cd ~/Downloads
mkdir homebrew
curl -L https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C homebrew
sudo mv homebrew /usr/local/homebrew
export PATH="/usr/local/homebrew/bin:$PATH"

5. Install iTerm2

Alternative to a built in Terminal, but it is far more configurable, which we need to get this look and feel of a drop down console.

brew install --cask iterm2

6. Install oh-my-zsh theme

This is a theme for a terminal, which will make it look nice and add some useful features.

sh -c "$(curl -fsLS https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

7. Configure path to brew in .zshrc file

Add path to brew to your .zshrc file. Open it with your text editor and insert the following line at the end of the file:

For ARM macs

export PATH="/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH"

For intel macs

export PATH="/usr/local/homebrew/bin:$PATH"

8. Install custom font

• In browser download font here
• Open 'font book' on a mac (search 'font book' in spotlight) and drag&drop this font from downloads folder.

9. Install powerline10k theme

This theme will help us configure iTerm2 to display information in a convenient way.

git clone https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git $ZSH_CUSTOM/themes/powerlevel10k

If you don't have git on your machine, install it with brew:

brew install git

10. Configure iTerm2

Working with iTerm2 settings.

1. Delete default profile

   Settings

   Profiles

   create new profile set as Default delete Default Profile

2. Configure colors

   Copy contents of danil.itermcolors file in this repo then create your own 'user.itermcolors' file in your home directory and paste the contents of danil.itermcolors file there. Then in iTerm2 go to:

   Settings

   Profiles

   Colors

   Color Presets

   in Color Presets drop-down menu select Import (and select this user.itermcolors file in the home dir)

   after import in Color Presets drop-down menu select this 'user' color theme

3. Configure fonts

   Settings

   Profiles

   Text

   Font

   find SourceCodePro+Powerline...

   check the Use ligatures checkbox

   increase fontsize to 14

4. Statusbar

   Settings

   Profiles

   Session

   check Status bar enabled select Configure Status Bar

   Configure what you want to display by dragging the modules down, I use the following:

   CPU

   RAM

   Auto-Rainbow -> Light Colors

   Select Advanced

   change the background color (use color picker and pick color of iterm window)

   Settings

   Appearance

   change the Status bar location to 'Bottom'.

5. Apply powerlevel10k

   Open .zshrc

   • replace the ZSH_THEME="robbyrussell" with ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k"
   • restart terminal and it will pop up with configuration wizard
   • answer (n) No to first (font) question
   • then logically to all other questions about icons appearance on the screen
   • further settings are up to you, but the way I set it up in the video are as follows:

   • (3) Rainbow
   • (1) Unicode
   • (2) 24-hour format
   • (1) Angled
   • (1) Sharp
   • (1) Flat
   • (1) One Line
   • (1) Compact
   • (2) Many icons
   • (1) Concise
   • (y) Yes (Enable Transient Prompt)
   • (1) Verbose
   • (y) Yes (Overwrite ~/.p10k.zsh)

   You can always re-run this configuration by terminal command: p10k configure

11. Plugins for terminal

Minor things that are very convenient

1. Autosuggestion plugin This plugin will add the command autosuggestion to terminal which user can use with 'tab'

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

   Open .zshrc and in the plugins variable (for now it should look like this plugins=(git)). Add zsh-autosuggestions (!!! no comma between plugins in tuple). The result shoud look like this: plugins=(git zsh-autosuggestions)

2. syntax-highlighting This plugin will highlight syntax in terminal .. code-block:

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

   Open .zshrc and in the plugins variable add zsh-syntax-highlighting. At this step plugins variable should look like this: plugins=(git zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-highlighting)

3. Web-search from terminal with google command This will allow useing terminal to search google

   Open .zshrc and and add web-search to plugins variable. Now your plugins will look like this plugins=(git zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-highlighting web-search)

12. Drop-down Quake-style mode

1. Configure shortcut

   Settings

   Keys

   Hotkey

   select Create a Dedicated Hotkey Window

   input your hotkey Ctrl+~

   check Floating Window

1. Further setup

   Settings

   Profiles

   Window

   in the Space drop-down menu select All Spaces

   in the Screen drop-down menu select Screen with Cursor

   check Hide after opening

   In Profiles you will see a new profile Hotkey Window select it

   Window

   Make sure Use transparrency is checked

   Change the Transparency level to whatever suits you, I prefer 5

2. Open iTerm2 and hide it at computer startup

   With Spotlight open Login Items and add iTerm2 to login items

   Remove it from dock and Tab-Switcher menu:

   Settings

   Appearance

   check Exclude from Dock and Tab Application Switcher

   Now your terminal will be allways be running in the background and regardless of which screen you are on you can toggle pull it down/up with Ctrl+~ shortcut

   If you need the settings, use Cmd+,` shortcut when terminal window is on screen

13. Configure VSCode

1. Support the custom font in VSCode terminal

   Go to VSCode settings and search for terminal.integrated.fontFamily and paste there 'SourceCodePro+Powerline+Awesome Regular' (make sure to use quotes)

2. Configure launching VSCode with terminal code command

   Add this line to your .zshrc file

   code () { VSCODE_CWD="$PWD" open -n -b "com.microsoft.VSCode" --args $* ;}