Style your Terminal better by mastering these settings 🤩
Tags: terminal, productivity, tools, webdev
Published: 2018-08-15 13:42:45

---
title: Style your Terminal better by mastering these settings 🤩
published: true
cover_image: https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/4cy8qbidiw19na7yqu5z.png
description: Let's take a deep dive into iTerm2 settings to style your terminal better.
tags: terminal, productivity, tools, webdev
---
My terminal use to look very basic but then I played around with these settings and see the changes:

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/sqzxkemswbc6lvi48pjr.png)

We all love **Oh-my-zsh**, It's awesome. But iTerm in itself is quite a powerful tool so Let see it's setting that you can play around one by one.

## Appearance Settings 

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/p5pgrhbh9tg7wxb508cz.png)

This is the most powerful setting as this can completely transform your terminal's look and feel. There are a lot of options you can go through but let's discuss the major setting options only.

#### 1. Tabs

* **Tab bar location:** You can position your tab bar in three locations top, bottom or left. Try "left", it will give you a feel of text editor.

![](https://media.giphy.com/media/fHcngUhmBT5dOqH5js/giphy.gif)

* **Theme:** There are two themes, one is dark and one is light. *Pro Tip:* Use dark with a dark color preset and light with light. Check out how cool left tab looks in the dark theme. Just shrink the tab section and it will look like below.

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/4cy8qbidiw19na7yqu5z.png)

* **Other small settings:** Tabs show a lot of information, that may not be required. Check out my settings below or just play around with your own to hide extra content.

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/d8ymilyd206ijrkrhie3.png)

#### 2. Panes
You can hide and show tabs in the split panes. I personally like it without tab.
 
![](https://media.giphy.com/media/1vZcEzttyRufEE03SJ/giphy.gif)

#### 3. Dimming 

![](https://media.giphy.com/media/uVsrOYkgvpeBVioQZs/giphy.gif)

You must have noticed when you have multiple panes and you working on one others pane become Dim. You can change that using this setting. I have disabled the dimming as it looks cleaner when active.

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/rnc4q3199agetna44owe.png)

## Profile Settings

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/8uh55o6jrbkhnf6v0tcc.png)

You can play around with a lot of style elements in this section. This is also where you can create your own custom design profile, as making changes in default is not recommended. 

*Do check out the link to my setting files at the end of the article.* 
 
### Colors Setting
![Colors Settings](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/q1t32dk6fpp5m3t3opcg.png)

This is most important as color defines everything. Let's go through the most important settings.

#### 1. Color Presets:
We all love Oh-My-Zsh templates but do you know that iTerm has it's own Color preset, that you can be imported easily. Check out [iterm2colorschemes.com](https://iterm2colorschemes.com) for this.

![](https://media.giphy.com/media/PMidjVG9PSUMxXEJb8/giphy.gif)

My personal favorites are:

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/2k4nmcuz3cwozqc2kh9m.png)

#### 2. Cursor Guide: 
This is a small little tweak, but this can make your terminal look kick a**. It gives a background color to the line where the cursor is and it looks super cool. You can also changes its color to suit your color preset.

![](https://media.giphy.com/media/2ywPfeYQnj24Q2Yg3Q/giphy.gif)

### Text Setting

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/a2p53yfjwu45kbbq96ud.png)
90% you see on the terminal is text so let's customize that in this section.

#### 1. Cursor Type:
There are three cursor types that you can select from Underline, Vertical bar and Box. I Like box.

![](https://media.giphy.com/media/YByO6TvYLgSVz6jLVn/giphy.gif)

#### 2. Font Type:
In my example, I'm using ***Operator Mono*** but it's an expensive font. You can use Other popular Fonts like **[Hack](https://github.com/source-foundry/Hack)** or **[M+2m](http://www.fontspace.com/m-fonts/m-2m)** or **[PowerLevel Fonts](https://github.com/bhilburn/powerlevel9k/wiki/Install-Instructions#step-2-install-a-powerline-font)**. Check out this great [list](http://www.fontspace.com/m-fonts/m-2m) of top 11 fonts.

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/0opexq6ovbfqrkk1pdre.png)

### Window Settings 

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/tj8d4jtelk3dkj48cc6s.png)

Here you can play with Background window. Two major settings are:

#### 1. Transparency:
Where simply you can make the window transparent. I like it opaque but you can always give it a try.

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/dx88qvvxic66oxdzimoj.png)

#### 2. Background Image: 
In case you want to add any cool picture in the background on maybe your logo, this can help. I recommend using a pattern, you can download it from [here](https://www.toptal.com/designers/subtlepatterns/), check out this cool Star Wars like Pattern

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/9ytlh3qarptfbdgqsl83.png)

**Note:** *While using pattern do choose "tile image" option.*

## Conclusion
This is all for now guys. Hope you enjoyed this article. Do share your own customize terminal's pictures in the comment section or tweet me [@Sarthology](https://twitter.com/Sarthology).

Please share with your fellow developers if you like it👨🏻‍💻. Also, don't forget to check my [Medium Blog](https://medium.com/@Sarthaksharma0). You will find a lot of good content here. 

If you want to just copy paste all the setting and save time, here is a [gist](https://gist.github.com/sarthology/efea8a77e8c096df4d34b380900b9efd). 

One more thing 😜. I'm planning to work on some cool Javascript Projects and if you are too then let's collaborate guys.