Zsh for Humans

Zsh for Humans can automatically teleport your local shell environment to a remote host when connecting via SSH. This allows you to use your configuration on remote machines without requiring git, zsh, or sudo on the remote host.

To enable and configure this, search for ssh in your ~/.zshrc file.

You can install Zsh for Humans using a single command in bash, zsh, or sh. The installer requires curl or wget. It will back up your existing Zsh startup files, create new ones, install necessary components, and configure your shell as a login shell. The process is interactive and asks for confirmation at each step.

if command -v curl >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/romkatv/zsh4humans/v5/install)"
else
  sh -c "$(wget -O- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/romkatv/zsh4humans/v5/install)"
fi

When you press <kbd>Tab</kbd>, suggestions are provided by Zsh completion functions and zsh-completions.

• Ambiguous completions: If multiple options exist, fzf starts automatically to allow interactive selection.
• Selection: Use <kbd>Enter</kbd> to accept a selection.
• Multi-select: Use <kbd>Ctrl+Space</kbd> to select multiple items, or <kbd>Ctrl+A</kbd> to select all of them.

When connected via SSH, the prompt and terminal title often display the hostname reported by the remote machine. To use the hostname you passed to the ssh command instead, use the expression ${${${Z4H_SSH##*:}//\%/%%}:-%m} in your configuration.

Configure Terminal Title

zstyle ':z4h:term-title:ssh' preexec '%n@'${${${Z4H_SSH##*:}//\%/%%}:-%m}': ${1//\%/%%}'
zstyle ':z4h:term-title:ssh' precmd  '%n@'${${${Z4H_SSH##*:}//\%/%%}:-%m}': %~'

Configure Prompt (Powerlevel9k)

Add this to your ~/.p10k.zsh file:

typeset -g POWERLEVEL9K_CONTEXT_TEMPLATE=%n@${${${Z4H_SSH##*:}//\%/%%}:-%m}

To keep the prompt at a consistent location (the bottom of the screen) when Zsh starts or when pressing Ctrl+L, use the prompt-at-bottom option.

Note: This feature requires that start-tmux is not set to no.

If you prefer using the clear command instead of Ctrl+L, you can alias clear to the Zsh for Humans soft-clear function.

# Move prompt to the bottom when zsh starts and on Ctrl+L.
zstyle ':z4h:' prompt-at-bottom 'yes'

# Alias clear to the soft-bottom clear function
alias clear=z4h-clear-screen-soft-bottom

To completely remove Zsh for Humans from your system, follow these steps:

1. Remove configuration files: Delete or replace your ~/.zshenv and ~/.zshrc files. If you allowed the installer to back up your existing files during installation, they can be found in ~/zsh-backup.
2. Restart your terminal: You must restart the terminal application itself; simply restarting the zsh shell is insufficient.
3. Clear the cache: Delete the Zsh for Humans cache directory to ensure no residual data remains.

rm -rf -- "${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/zsh4humans/v5"

Use p10k configure to set up your prompt. For productivity, the Lean style with Few icons is recommended.

Additional prompt customizations:

• SSH Transient Prompt: To ensure transient prompts work correctly when closing SSH connections, bind z4h-eof to Ctrl+D and set ignore_eof.
• Smooth Rendering: Use POSTEDIT to handle empty lines before or after the prompt for smoother rendering during command entry.
• Secondary Prompt (PS2): You can bind Enter to z4h-accept-line to insert a newline instead of showing the secondary prompt when a command is incomplete.

Enabling term-shell-integration allows the shell to mark up output with semantic information using OSC 133 escape codes. This is supported by terminals like iTerm2 and kitty. It also helps prevent rendering issues when resizing the terminal window (provided integrated tmux is enabled).

# Mark up shell's output with semantic information.
zstyle ':z4h:' term-shell-integration 'yes'

Zsh for Humans uses zsh-autosuggestions to provide command completions based on your history.

• Partial acceptance: Any key binding that moves the cursor can accept the suggested word (e.g., moving the cursor one word to the right accepts that word).
• Full acceptance: Press <kbd>Alt+M</kbd> or <kbd>Option+M</kbd> to accept the entire autosuggestion without moving the cursor.

You can test the environment in a disposable Docker container. Once you exit the shell, the container is deleted.

Alpine Linux:

docker run -e TERM -e COLORTERM -e LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 -w /root -it --detach-keys="ctrl-^,ctrl@" --rm alpine sh -uec '
  apk add zsh curl tmux
  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/romkatv/zsh4humans/v5/install)"'

Ubuntu:

docker run -e TERM -e COLORTERM -w /root -it --detach-keys="ctrl-^,ctrl@" --rm ubuntu sh -uec '
  apt-get update
  apt-get install -y zsh curl tmux
  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/romkatv/zsh4humans/v5/install)"'