What are the best ZSH configuration frameworks?

Question

9

Options
Considered

223

User
Recs.

Apr 27, 2023

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

9 Options Considered

Best ZSH configuration frameworks	Price	Included plugins	Included themes
88 Prezto	FREE	40	21
80 Oh-My-Zsh	FREE	260	140
-- zim	-	-	-
-- Zinit	FREE	300	141
-- Antigen	FREE	-	-

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score 46 · Answer 1

Prezto

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Con

Slow

It works very slowly with some themes. See More

Specs

Included plugins:40

Included themes:21

Framework/Plugin Manager?:Framework

Top Pro

Opt-in functionality

Top Pro

No auto update

Prezto won't automatically update, which means that it won't ever start an update without your manual permission. See More

Top Pro

Fork of oh-my-zsh

Prezto used to be a major fork of oh-my-zsh, and it was moved into a separate project to better focus on performance, simplicity, and customization. See More

See All

score 69 · Answer 2

Oh-My-Zsh

Top Con

Major performance issues

It's not unusual to wait >1 second to initialize a new shell. See More

Top Pro

Great enhancements

The provided enhancements to zsh just hit the spot. See More

Elias Van Ootegem's Experience

oh-my-zsh is one of those rare tools that everybody seems to settle on. It's great to have options, but when there's an open-source tool that everybody agrees on, it becomes the new standard, and might impact how we work in the future. OmZ's git-based updates are painless and work like a charm, all scripting-based tools should take note and work on a similar update system. See More

Specs

Bare load time:380ms

Included plugins:260

Framework/Plugin Manager?:Framework

Included themes:140

Top Con

Installing/updating custom plugins/themes is manual

Installing plugin/extension that is not in the distribution (e.g. zsh-syntax-highlighting, powerlevel9k) requires git checkout and sometime creating symbolic link with adequate name (*.plugin.zsh, *.zsh-theme); also you have to remember to pull these repositories from time to time to update. See More

Top Pro

Easy to extend

It is super easy to write additional plugins or themes for. See More

Peter J. Mello's Experience

This was my first experience with a ZSH ecosystem, and though I've tried the others, I always end up coming back. See More

Top Con

Updates interrupt your flow

The update check triggers on zsh launch, so if you leave your terminal open, you need to manually check for updates, or (most annoying) when you launch your terminal, sometimes you'll need to go through the update wizard before you get to your prompt. See More

Top Pro

Easy to understand config

The configuration is very well documented and makes it easy to edit. See More

谢文龙's Experience

It is convenient to add plugins See More

Top Con

Updates over Git

Because it updates over Git, if something breaks in an update you will need to use Git-fu to revert to an older version. See More

Top Pro

Super customizable

There are a ton of plugins that come with it for many common tools and OS's. See More

kaznovac's Experience

not the fastest zsh framework to use but the fastest to get set and running See More

Top Pro

Updates over Git

This provides a robust update mechanism with full version control. That means that no custom mechanism needs to be implemented for upgrades of the user profile. It also means that your own modifications can be preserved while still allowing upgrades. And it means that you can downgrade at any time to any previous revision if anything doesn't work right with the new version. See More

Top Pro

Simple installation and updates

A user doesn't have to be particularly technical to benefit from oh-my-zsh. You run a simple command to install and it asks you if it may check for git updates on a regular basis. You give up a bit of control but you get a tremendous benefit for very little individual effort. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Can be used by zsh on Linux, Mac or under Cygwin on Windows. See More

See All

score 27 · Answer 3

zim

Top Pro

Fast startup

Faster startup than oh-my-zsh, prezto or zplug: https://github.com/zimfw/zimfw/wiki/Speed See More

Top Con

Less bundled functionality compared to other configs

AtomicCoding's Experience

Super Fast and Actively Maintained. See More

Top Pro

Modular

Only load the modules you need. Configure everything zim-related in ~/.zimrc See More

ResourcefulMaat's Experience

super fast framework is the famework only todo. See More

kaznovac's Experience

very easy to install, and out of the box great features with unmatched speed See More

StudiousNinshubur's Experience

Pretty fast See More

See All

score 17 · Answer 4

Zinit

Top Pro

Asynchronous Turbo Mode

This is Zplugin's unfair advantage when compared with all its competition. ATM postpones the loading of a plugin until after the processing of .zshrc is finished and your prompt is shown and ready for input, offering time savings well north of 80% compared to others' startup times. Essentially this means that you can now be typing that first command you want to execute DURING the extra 1-1.5 seconds that's needed to implement all the plugins in your setup instead of having to wait for it to be done before you can start typing. See More

Top Con

Maintainer randomly removes repository

Unreliable. See More

iboyperson's Experience

It is far faster then many competitors and allows for a customizability hard to find. I switched to it from the popular oh-my-zsh because of zplugins lack of additional bloat and compatability of oh-my--zsh plugins along with so many others. See More

Specs

Bare load time:30ms

Included plugins:300

Included themes:141

Top Pro

Fast

Top Con

Lack of configuration examples for new users

While the documentation is both broad and deep, it assumes a disturbingly high level of familiarity with both the shell and the concepts behind synthesizing many separate plugins into a complete custom shell. It's very doubtful that any new convert to Z Shell could make good and quick use of it without first getting their feet wet with one of the older frameworks that offer the benefit of many pages of discussion between veterans on how exactly to make it do what you want. See More

Peter J. Mello's Experience

Zplugin is a reimagining of one of the most feature-rich Z Shell configuration frameworks, Zplug, that attempts to solve the Achilles' heel of including so many internal mechanisms: major lags and poor internal management of its subprocesses. By all accounts it is a resounding success at doing so, retaining all the bells and whistles of Zplug and adding a few of its own and needing barely a third of the time to do so in comparison. The initial configuration requires some patience and willingness to carefully read all the documentation so as to grasp the thought process behind its organization before starting as opposed to others like Oh-My-Zsh where even newbies can dive in and skim just the paragraphs they need as they go. I've only recently made the switch and still haven't been able to precisely duplicate my old shell setup, but the time savings I feel already with just the big pieces in place are both amazing and addictive. If I can massage the remaining little details into place they'll have a new convert on their hands that won't easily be lured away. See More

Top Pro

Supports Oh-My-Zsh & ZPrezto plugins

Oh-My-Zsh and ZPrezto represent two of the oldest and largest customization managers for Z Shell, each with standout modules that have earned them devoted followings. Zplugin lets you easily access any plugins from either with simple aliases that fetch and integrate them seamlessly within its matrix. See More

PassionateBadb's Experience

Tried OMZ, prezto, antibody, antigen, zplug (and maybe something else?). Zplugin faster (yes I benchmarked with hyperfine) than everything else in real-world scenarios for both sysadmin and developer workflows. If you want a fast ZSH, this is the best (tested in early 2018, still true as of 2019/09/17). Probably not the best choice for "brand-new-to-unix" folks though. See More

Top Pro

Install individual plugins from their Github repositories

Any experienced Z Shell ninja has a few plugins they've found which exist outside the usual management frameworks within their own individual repos. Zplugin provides a syntax that saves the work of cloning it manually and then sourcing the necessary commands into .zshrc. Just point it at the Git URL and let it work its magic. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Pro

Load / unload on condition allows to define multiple themes

Zplugin's turbo mode is not only active at startup, but also after it. It then can constantly (every second) check if e.g. a condition to load or unload a plugin has been meet. This allows to e.g. define a variable $THEME which will select the currently active theme – just set up a load condition THEME == 1 and unload condition THEME != 1 for the first theme plugin, then a second load condition THEME == 2 and unload condition THEME != 2 for the second theme plugin, etc. See More

Top Pro

Binary Zsh module with autocompilation and statistics

Zplugin is equipped with a binary Zsh module, which: transparently autocompiles every file sourced by the source and dot (.) builtins, measures the loading time of every file sourced by the source and dot (.) builtins. This is helpful when sourcing many files and/or loading complex plugins. It is good to know that the maximum performance that comes from the compilation of the scripts is guarded internally by Zsh. It is often the case that a (small) edit to a script makes the compiled version of the script outdated and we forget to run zcompile again. See More

Top Pro

Clean startup time of less than 50 milliseconds

Some Z shell configuration frameworks use bytecode compiling to optimize the load times of the plugins you use, but Zplugin ITSELF is bytecode compiled on install. This provides the muscle to enable all the available commands and command variants for managing it without sacrificing any speed. See More

Top Pro

Reports costs of each configured plugin

To make good decisions on which plugins are worth the time cost of use, you need good information. Zplugin gives you exactly that with the "zplugin time" command which outputs the exact number of milliseconds required to load each one on the current shell invocation. With that it's easy to know where to reclaim lost speed and invest time in more carefully selecting the features you implement from the troublemakers. See More

Top Pro

Bytecode compiling for all plugins

Zplugin pre-compiles each plugin into bytecode, eliminating the need for the shell to parse and interpret them as written on each shell invocation as has been typically done. See More

Top Pro

Completion management

With the Z Shell now (as of February 2019) closing in on its 30th birthday, there are multitudes of command completion modules to select from and customize. Zplugin provides a discrete and effective way to use as many as you see fit, as well as taking from each only the types of completions you actually need. This solves a major issue with custom shells, especially for sysadmins which may dabble in many different roles with their machine such as ssh remoting, development projects, container management, etc. Find the modules that give you shortcuts for all but only what you need from each. See More

Top Pro

Ability to unload a plugin

Zplugin allows to unload any plugin. This is handy especially when switching themes – it then e.g. removes the precmd hooks that the unloaded theme did, making a clear ground for the new theme that's being loaded. See More

Top Pro

Load a plugin on a change of a file

Zplugin has a feature where a loading of a plugin can be deferred until a file changes. This is done with the two interchangeable ice-mods on-update-of and subscribe, e.g. subscribe'/var/log/auth.log'. See More

Top Pro

Open Source

See All

score 12 · Answer 5

Antigen

Top Pro

No bloat

Unlike oh-my-zsh, you just enable plugins and themes as required. See More

Top Con

Slow

Implemented using e.g. forking functions returning via stdin, it is noticeably slow. See More

BrightSimargl's Experience

Simple, fast, non-bloated. See More

Specs

Bare load time:60ms

Top Pro

Can simply plug in bundles from github

See All

score 6 · Answer 6

zulu

Martin Renvoize's Experience

Simple setup that works well with the defaults See More

score 3 · Answer 7

zgen

Add Video or Image

score 4 · Answer 8

Zplug

score 2 · Answer 9

Antibody

Top Pro

Fast!

Specs

Bare load time:50ms

Framework/Plugin Manager?:Plugin Manager

Top Pro

No auto update

Won't update without your consent See More

Top Pro

Easy to configure

See All

9 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Prezto

My Recommendation for Prezto

Lightweight

Slow

Opt-in functionality

No auto update

Fork of oh-my-zsh

My Recommendation for Oh-My-Zsh

My Recommendation for Oh-My-Zsh

Major performance issues

Great enhancements

Installing/updating custom plugins/themes is manual

Easy to extend

Updates interrupt your flow

Easy to understand config

Updates over Git

Super customizable

Updates over Git

Simple installation and updates

Cross platform

My Recommendation for zim

My Recommendation for zim

Fast startup

Less bundled functionality compared to other configs

Modular

My Recommendation for Zinit

My Recommendation for Zinit

Asynchronous Turbo Mode

Maintainer randomly removes repository

Fast

Lack of configuration examples for new users

Supports Oh-My-Zsh & ZPrezto plugins

Install individual plugins from their Github repositories

Lightweight

Load / unload on condition allows to define multiple themes

Binary Zsh module with autocompilation and statistics

Clean startup time of less than 50 milliseconds

Reports costs of each configured plugin

Bytecode compiling for all plugins

Completion management

Ability to *unload* a plugin

Load a plugin on a change of a file

Open Source

My Recommendation for Antigen

My Recommendation for Antigen

No bloat

Slow

Can simply plug in bundles from github

My Recommendation for zulu

My Recommendation for zulu

My Recommendation for zgen

My Recommendation for zgen

My Recommendation for Zplug

My Recommendation for Zplug

My Recommendation for Antibody

My Recommendation for Antibody

Fast!

No auto update

Easy to configure

Don't see your favorite option? Add it.

One sec!

Ability to unload a plugin