Working in a terminal emulator is great for getting things done fast, and there are so many useful plugins and tools to make that experience faster and easier. In this post I will share the most useful tools and configurations that have improved my workflow significantly. All of these configurations can be found on GitHub.

Before I get started, however, note that I am a vim user, so most of the following will be vim-related. Actually, while we are on the subject, let’s start the list off with vim!

vim

My favorite text editor of all time is vim. It is extremely customizable and extensible, not to mention extremely precise. Yes, it is true that vim has a steep learning curve, but once the keystrokes become muscle memory, working in vim is 10x faster than any other text editor. For any purpose. Period. Here are some of my tweaks that I have accumulated over the years.

Faster Mode Switching

As most know, context switching has a lot of overhead, or time consumption. Whether you are switching between making dinner to walking the dog or switching the active process in an operating system, nothing is instantaneous. Such is the case when switching between NORMAL and INSERT modes in vim. The escape key is just so far away, and you have to lift your hand each time to leave INSERT mode! With this tweak, pushing j and k fast enough will exit into NORMAL mode. You can use any two keys, however j and k are nice because very few English words contain that letter combination.

" Escape key also mapped as pushing j and k
inoremap jk <Esc>
inoremap kj <Esc>
autocmd InsertEnter * set timeoutlen=75
autocmd InsertLeave * set timeoutlen=1000

Faster :Commands

I am constantly saving my work, opening new files to edit, or random other colon-commands. All that Shift work makes my pinkie sore! This tweak makes the semicolon do the same thing as colon. In other words, I don’t have to keeping Shifting when I want to save, quit, substitute, or any other command. Normally the semicolon doesn’t have a purpose, so it is perfect to make it function the same as colon.

" Semicolon in normal mode is the same as colon
nnoremap ; :

Tab Moving

Okay, I know that I’m supposed to use vim buffers, but I have always used splits / tabs, and I haven’t put the time in to learn buffers yet. I like tabs because I can visually see what files I have open and organize them accordingly. This tweak helps me move between both tabs and splits in a vim-like way. Ctrl plus j and k switch between tabs, and Ctrl plus h and l cycles between splits.

" Tab moving
nnoremap <C-J> :tabnext<CR>
nnoremap <C-K> :tabprev<CR>

" Split moving
set splitbelow
set splitright
nnoremap <C-L> <C-W>w
nnoremap <C-H> <C-W>W


zsh

My preferred shell is zsh due to the number of plugins, themes, and great tab completions. Besides the obvious vi-mode, below are my favorite plugins that save me time and keystrokes.

Autosuggestions

Whenever I do something in the terminal, 95% of the time I have done it before or something similar. zsh-autosuggestions lets me easily see previous similar commands. All I have to do is remember the first few characters! Combined with the below binds, I can quickly accept the autosuggestion by pressing Ctrl+l and run the command.

bindkey -v
bindkey '^f' vi-forward-blank-word
bindkey '^l' vi-end-of-line

This is the most useful zsh plugin, I cannot stress it enough.

Aliases

I believe keeping my hands on the keyboard keeps me working efficiently, calmly, and happily. Sometimes I just get so frustrated when I have to lift my hands to highlight something to copy and paste. Especially in Windows where you have to go to the drop-down, choose select, and then carefully highlight your selection! Anyway, these aliases help keep me sane. I use these to copy (yank) the output of commands or paste (put) the clipboard as an input.

# linux
alias yank="xclip -selection primary"
alias put="xclip -o -selection primary"
# osx
alias yank="pbcopy"
alias put="pbpaste"
# windows (cygwin)
alias yank="cat > /dev/clipboard"
alias put="cat /dev/clipboard"

Further in my quest to keep my hands on the keyboard, I use the rxvt-unicode terminal emulator combined with certain plugins and binds to use vim-style selection. I won’t go into the details here, but I rarely use a mouse to copy from the terminal. tmux has a similar keybind as well.


i3 window manager

If you have gotten this far, you may have noticed a theme to this post: I like the keyboard. Well, the best window manager to keep me happy is i3wm. It is a tiling window manager so I’m always using the most space on the screen, but the best feature is the navigation. Switching desktops is simply alt plus a number. Switching focus on a desktop is alt plus h, j, k, or l. Moving windows? Just add a Shift! Isn’t that fantastic?

set $alt Mod1

# change focus
bindsym $alt+h focus left
bindsym $alt+j focus down
bindsym $alt+k focus up
bindsym $alt+l focus right

# move focused window
bindsym $alt+Shift+h move left
bindsym $alt+Shift+j move down
bindsym $alt+Shift+k move up
bindsym $alt+Shift+l move right

Here’s something a little extra in case I really am not in the mood to use a mouse.

bindsym $alt+Shift+m mode "mouse"
mode "mouse" {
    # escape keys
    bindsym Escape mode "default"
    bindsym q mode "default"

    # space to left click, shift space to right click
    bindsym space exec --no-startup-id "xdotool click 1"
    bindsym Shift+space exec --no-startup-id "xdotool click 3"

    # fine movement
    bindsym j exec --no-startup-id "xdotool mousemove_relative --  0  5"
    bindsym k exec --no-startup-id "xdotool mousemove_relative --  0 -5"
    bindsym h exec --no-startup-id "xdotool mousemove_relative -- -5  0"
    bindsym l exec --no-startup-id "xdotool mousemove_relative --  5  0"

    # coarse movement
    bindsym Shift+j exec --no-startup-id "xdotool mousemove_relative --    0  100"
    bindsym Shift+k exec --no-startup-id "xdotool mousemove_relative --    0 -100"
    bindsym Shift+h exec --no-startup-id "xdotool mousemove_relative -- -100    0"
    bindsym Shift+l exec --no-startup-id "xdotool mousemove_relative --  100    0"

    # scroll
    bindsym Ctrl+j exec --no-startup-id "xdotool click 5"
    bindsym Ctrl+k exec --no-startup-id "xdotool click 4"
    bindsym Ctrl+d exec --no-startup-id "xdotool click --repeat 4 5"
    bindsym Ctrl+u exec --no-startup-id "xdotool click --repeat 4 4"
    bindsym d exec --no-startup-id "xdotool click --repeat 4 5"
    bindsym u exec --no-startup-id "xdotool click --repeat 4 4"
}


Conclusion

As a devops engineer, I almost exclusively work in the terminal. These tweaks and configurations help me focus on the task at hand, rather than trying to remember commands and flags. I hope you found them useful too! Maybe I should rename this post How to Get Rid of Your Mouse.

By the way, I used to use Vimperator for Firefox before Quantum. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a good replacement, so let me know if you have any suggestions!