Oh My Zsh: 2020 Year in Review
Tags: zsh, ohmyzsh, opensource, cli
Published: 2021-02-03 02:12:38

# Oh My Zsh: 2020 Year in Review

What. A. Year.

First off, we'd like to take a moment to acknowledge those who have been impacted by COVID-19. While there are a number of positives for Oh My Zsh in 2020, we can only assume that there are many within our community who have suffered greatly.

We may not know each other, individually, but know that we care about you. 🤗

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So...2020, let's dig into it.

## Contribution Stats for 2020

Our year started off with the friendly [commit](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/commit/ca627655) to change the copyright year of the project by [Angel_Kitty](https://github.com/AngelKitty) and the [final commit of 2020](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/commit/0f683670) was a fix by our delightful core maintainer, [Marc](https://github.com/mcornella), to our new CLI update tool.

![The new Oh My Zsh CLI tool](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/hue3uxw462xm9o1yp7q7.png)

Overall, we had 457 commits to the main branch of Oh My Zsh, which included 13 new [plugins](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/tree/master/plugins) and 2 new [themes](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/tree/master/themes). 

**What were a few of those new plugins?** Great question! 

We landed new plug-ins for [Bazel](https://bazel.build/), [sublime-merge](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/tree/master/plugins/sublime-merge), [Microsoft .NET CLI](https://dotnet.microsoft.com/), [git-lfs](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/tree/master/plugins/git-lfs), [shell-proxy](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/tree/master/plugins/shell-proxy), a [password generator](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/tree/master/plugins/genpass), [HTTPie](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/tree/master/plugins/httpie), and [Lando for Docker](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/tree/master/plugins/lando)...to name a few.

To make this happen, we had many return contributors...but we also had 210 people have code accepted to Oh My Zsh for the first time! 

For context, we are approaching 1,800 different people who have source code contributions in the Oh My Zsh that you've all come to love and use. 💘

## Community Building in 2020

Outside of code contributions, we also want to reflect on a few other ways that the community expanded. 

While this isn't a popularity contest, seeing that we passed 120,000 ⭐️ stars and 20,000 forks on GitHub in 2020 feels like such a great honor. 

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### ¡Hola Discord!

In December 2019, [Larson Carter](https://github.com/larson-carter) (a core contributor and community organizer) helped us launch [our very own Discord server](https://discord.gg/ohmyzsh). In June, the [server got verified](https://twitter.com/larsonc_/status/1270712145152315397). We recently passed 4,000 members!

![Oh My Zsh's Discord Stats for 2020](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/u4nfsjsv6ftkya2nyr4f.png)

The Oh My Zsh Discord appears to be growing at around ~680 members each month. In order to nurture that community, a number of people have stepped up to help volunteer time to help people with their installation woes, configuration questions, and provide moderation. 

In retrospect, I feel silly for asking Larson, *"will anyone even use it?"*

So many of you have all loudly answered that. 😜

Curious? [Join our Oh My Zsh Discord today!](https://discord.gg/ohmyzsh)

### Partnered with MLH Fellowship

The [MLH Fellowship](https://fellowship.mlh.io/) is a 12-week internship for aspiring software engineers. MLH reached out to us to ask if we would provide mentorship and guidance to a few developers while they made contributions to Oh My Zsh.

We signed up for the program and ended up accepting a few updates to the project along with [an official MLH theme](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/blob/master/themes/mlh.zsh-theme)!

😊 Big thanks to Larson for helping represent Oh My Zsh on that engagement. 

### Event: Q&A With Maintainers

We hosted a live Q&A session on September 18, 2020, and conducted that over Discord. 

![Screenshot from 2020 Q&A session](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/1iny1a0p30h73sane1b4.png)

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It was a lot of fun! We definitely want to schedule more of those in the future.

### Fabulous Community Content

We attribute much of our success over the years to word-of-mouth.
Nearly every person we meet in the community can point back to a friend, coworker, classmate, a speaker at a tech conference, or an author of a tutorial they read/watched online as having been where they first about Oh My Zsh.

🤔  Do you recall where you first heard of Oh My Zsh? Could you share your story in the comments?

Reflecting back on 2020, we wanted to highlight a few blog posts and videos that caught our attention. In no particular order.

#### Blog Posts

* [Speeding Up My Shell (Oh My Zsh)](https://blog.mattclemente.com/2020/06/26/oh-my-zsh-slow-to-load.html) by Matt Clemente
* [The Ultimate Guide to Your Terminal Makeover](https://towardsdatascience.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-your-terminal-makeover-e11f9b87ac99) by Shinichi Okada
* [Setting up the iMac - zsh, Oh My Zsh & Dracula](https://sahilparikh.dev/posts/2020/setting-up-ohmyzsh-git-terminal/) by Sahil Parikh
* [...but I want a pretty PROMPT!](https://dev.to/ineeader/but-i-want-a-pretty-prompt-mbi) by Inee Ader
* [Boost Your Productivity By Using The Terminal (iTerm & ZSH)](https://dev.to/mokkapps/boost-your-productivity-by-using-the-terminal-iterm-zsh-4879) by Michael Hoffman
* [WSL2: Making Windows 10 the perfect dev machine!](https://dev.to/cdennig/wsl2-making-windows-10-the-perfect-dev-machine-391k) by Christian Dennig
* [How to Set Up Your MacBook for Web Development in 202](https://www.fellow-consulting.com/how-to-set-up-your-macbook-for-web-development-in-2020/) by Mohammad Alhasan

📝  Did you write a blog post about Oh My Zsh? Please link to it in the comments!

#### Video Tutorials

* [ULTIMATE macOS Terminal (zsh) in 10 Minutes! ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq5Sg-n6G6U) by Bryan Tong (EN)

* [Arch Linux: Getting Started With ZSH](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6xWiqOpulI) (EN)

* [git for Beginners (Part 11): Oh My Zsh! Tutorial - git Customizations and Shortcuts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcoNNVM_GlQ) (EN)

* [Make your WSL or WSL2 terminal awesome - with Windows Terminal, zsh, oh-my-zsh and Powerlevel10k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=235G6X5EAvM) (EN)

* [เปลี่ยน Terminal ของเราให้สวยงาม ชิคๆ คูลๆ ด้วย Oh My Zsh (For Mac & Linux)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgTgKgKa_VY) (Thai)

* [macOS: Install and use the best shell oh-my-zsh](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR3F3izL7dE) (EN)

* [熟練Oh-My-Zsh基本操作，快速變身為鍵盤高手](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RyoyqnZSD8) (Chinese)

...and Brodie Robertson has a few things to say about why you shouldn't use Oh My Zsh. We encourage you to watch it!

* [You Really Don't Need Oh My Zsh And Here's Why (Rant)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLxr9hLfO0Q)

📺  do you have a good video from 2020? Please include a link in the comments!

#### 🤓😍🙃 Delightful Tweets

Here are a handful of happy tweets that we've seen made about Oh My Zsh in 2020. 

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Thanks for keeping us smiling!

### GitHub README Project

Marc and I (Robby) were invited to participate in [The ReadME Project](https://github.com/readme), which gave us an opportunity to share our open source journey.

It also meant that we each had a good excuse to get dressed up--in the middle of a global pandemic--and meet professional photographers for a social-distance-friendly photoshoot. 📸 🕺🏻

Here are links to each of our stories. 

#### Marc's ReadME Project

[Inspired to not only consume, but contribute](https://github.com/readme/marc-cornella)

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#### Robby's ReadME Project

[Finding strength and purpose in collaboration](https://github.com/readme/robby-russell)

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### Stickers, T-shirts, and buttons

We shipped a lot of t-shirts, stickers, coasters, and buttons in 2020. We appreciate the support and really enjoy seeing photos of them out in the world.

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Looking for new gear for 2021? do take a look around [our online shop](https://shop.planetargon.com/collections/oh-my-zsh). 

## Keep Your WFH photos coming

Your WFH photos have been lovely. We appreciate them. You can see a bunch in the replies on this tweet.

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## Hello, GitHub homepage?

...and who doesn't like seeing their logo on the [new GitHub homepage](https://github.com/home)?

![GitHub homepage screenshot with a collection of project logos](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/sjmkpw0dzvvrxjy8lorn.jpeg)

## 🕵🏼‍♀️ 🎙 Setting the record straight...

In 2020, I wanted to test out a new feature in Twitter and opted to clear up any confusion about how to pronounce Oh My Zsh.

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How does this resonate with you?

## Going into 2021? 

We looking forward to sharing more about our plans as we head into 2021. Do keep an eye out on Github, Twitter, and on Dev.to. 🙃

Thank you, you, and you, and you over there, and yeah, you, the one still reading this, and let's not forget about you...yeah, you, the who just ate a 🍪. Thank you, too!

Love,
The Oh My Zsh team