Appendix A — Mac Terminal Configuration

These are some of the author’s personal terminal configurations, for your reference. Feel free but not obligated to use them.

Theme

Download the Solarized color themes, and unzip.

In Terminal Settings, import a new Profile, and choose the solaraized/osx-terminal.app-colors-solarized/Solarized Dark ansi.terminal theme.

Set the Solarized Dark profile theme as default.

Increase font size to 18.

Shortcuts

Optionally further configure the profile by setting specific variables in a special configuration file. This file is called “~/.bash_profile” for bash shell users (older Macs, Windows Git Bash), or “~/.zshrc” for zsh shell users (newer Macs). Files beginning with a “.” are generally hidden files, so to access them we’ll use the text editor’s shell commands:

# Windows Git Bash, Older Macs:
code ~/.bash_profile

# Newer Macs:
code ~/.zshrc

After opening the file in your text editor, you can place any of the following contents inside:

# this is the ~/.bash_profile file or the ~/.zshrc file...

#
# CONFIGURATIONS
#

# control the "prompt" message that shows up in the terminal
# ... see also: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Controlling-the-Prompt.html
export PS1=" --->> "

# control some colors
# ... see also: https://osxdaily.com/2012/02/21/add-color-to-the-terminal-in-mac-os-x/
export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=GxFxCxDxBxegedabagaced

#
# SHORTCUTS / ALIASES
#

# listing all files in an easier to read format:
alias ll="ls -lahG"

# shortcuts for most common git commands:
alias gs="git status"
alias gd="git diff"
alias gl="git log"
alias gr="git remote -v"
alias gb="git branch"
alias gpom="git pull origin main"

# hiding or showing all icons on the desktop (when in screenshare or zen modes):
alias deskhide="defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop false && killall Finder"
alias deskshow="defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop true && killall Finder"

NOTE: if you see some Anaconda-related stuff in this file, leave it as-is!

After editing the config file, save the file. You may need to close your terminal window and re-open a new one for the changes to take effect.