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Installing ZSH on Windows

Arjun Porwal on March 21, 2020

Welcome Everyone All of us have seen customizable and feature-full terminals in linux and mac, if you want to have a cool looking &...

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J.C.Ködel • Mar 9 '21 • Edited

Working fine on Windows Terminal and VSCode, with some issues:

1) Flutter script only recognize MINGW, so you need to set an alias in your .zshrc: alias dart="/cygdrive/c/flutter/bin/dart.bat" and alias flutter="/cygdrive/c/flutter/bin/flutter.bat".

2) Git from cygwin doesn't work on flutter, so either don't install it or install git for windows and then delete (or rename) \cygwin\bin\git.exe

3) For Windows Terminal, open settings and change your prompt settings to "commandline": "zsh --login -i" (the default profile is {0caa0dad-35be-5f56-a8ff-afceeeaa6101})

4) For VSCode, configure your terminal to cygwin: "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\cygwin64\\Cygwin.bat",, then edit that batch file to set zsh as the default shell: cd /d "%~dp0bin" && zsh --login -i

And that's it... zsh working fine on both Windows Terminal and VSCode, without that trashy WSL.

Deandra Lisel • Nov 2 '21

how did you do it?

Arjun Porwal • Sep 10 '21

That's Great ! Thanks for the extra tips.

Maximilian Burszley • Mar 22 '20 • Edited

I'm uncertain why you'd go through the trouble of using cygwin/cmder when you can use WSL2+Terminal and have a native experience.

Arjun Porwal • Mar 22 '20 • Edited

Let me help you through this , I have specific reasons for not using WSL
Reason 1 - I will have to install Full linux shell in my windows
Reason 2 - The setup and usage of WSL was not easy to understand
Conclusion I simply preferred this way , cause I found it easier and I didn't have to install full linux shell in windows for just oh-my-zsh. Though If anyone does want a full native experience they can prefer WSL way too.

Maximilian Burszley • Mar 22 '20

Let me help you through this

I don't know if English is your first language, but that phrase is extremely condescending.

Reason 1 - I will have to install Full linux shell in my windows

You're already doing that with Cygwin.

Reason 2 - The setup and usage of WSL was not easy to understand

It's a Windows feature and then you install a distro through the Store. You're doing way more work in your post than what it takes to get it set up otherwise.

Arjun Porwal • Mar 23 '20 • Edited

I didn't mean the phrase that way, its all cool.
Ohkay so , with the help of Cygwin I am just installing apt-cyg , to install zsh & git that's all. The other packages are user's choice. But For WSL I have to go to windows store and install Full Ubuntu Shell Package .
Yes WSL is a windows feature, and some people might find it easier to set it up for their usage, I agree with that. It's just a matter of choice , for me it was easier to Find and Do it this way , and just shared it with others.
As I said Before, If anyone wants they can prefer going WSL way, this way isn't a compulsory.
Though thanks for listing this other way too here, it can help many more people 😊🤘

hawtre • Mar 22 '20

What do you mean by full Linux shell? You'd have to install zsh regardless, no?

Arjun Porwal • Mar 23 '20 • Edited

By Full Linux Shell I mean that , for the WSL way I will have to install Full Ubuntu Package (or whichever distro you prefer) just to use ZSH, in this way I am just installing apt-cyg package and then zsh that's it.
It's as simple as that and a matter of choice for the user, not a compulsory to go my way only. Just sharing what I found.

Muhimen • Mar 23 '20

Hey, it's giving no result for wget. what shall I do?

Arjun Porwal • Mar 23 '20

Let me List some things that you might have missed :

During installation the server that you selected , try another one.
In the search check your spelling (reference to the snapshot I Provided)
If there are any dropdowns visible try opening them and finding wget. Hope any of these helps. If it doesn't you can attach any of the Snapshot of your screen for me to help you more.

Muhimen • Mar 25 '20

Thanks bro. I just fixed it.

Arjun Porwal • Mar 25 '20

Awesome ! 🤘

Deeplobo • Nov 21 '23

r a sokha....

Ajinkya Borade • Mar 26 '21

thanks for this great article. But sadly after doing the zsh install step and quiting the cygwin terminal. When I reopen, there is no difference. no ZSH !

Alexander Khudoev • Mar 2 '22

Hey, Arjun! How I can implement this (zsh + cmder) Terminal as default PhpStorm Terminal? I'm trying to set up command: "cmd.exe" /k ""C:\cmder\Cmder.exe""
but it opens in separate window (not inside the PhpStorm terminal)..

OlegKhodakivskyi • Sep 29 '20 • Edited

Hi.
After commands
install apt-cyg /bin
and
apt-cyg install zsh git gdb dos2unix openssh vim

nothing happends, its should be like that?

Arjun Porwal • Sep 30 '20

maybe waiting for sometime would have made it work , or else you can try the next steps and see if the commands worked properly. If the commands didn't work then you will not see the screen in cmder as I did. Good luck

OlegKhodakivskyi • Oct 11 '20

Ok, I got an issue. After this step: "Do the same for Admin Privileges , rename it as {cygwin:ZSH as Admin} and replace command with:...". I launch Cmder again, it's starting mintty.exe but after gave error: "/usr/bin/zsh: Exit 126.
Failed to run '/usr/bin/zsh': No such file or directory".
zsh folder was not in archive so I created one, but error still pop out. Any suggetions or info about it?

Arjun Porwal • Oct 15 '20

Yeah so now its confirmed that the commands
install apt-cyg /bin
and
apt-cyg install zsh git gdb dos2unix openssh vim

did not work properly , that's why zsh is not installed yet. I think you can try to remove everything and follow the steps again. Maybe you missed a step that would have caused this problem.

Arnav • Sep 9 '23 • Edited

Thank you for this great article and even comments on this article are very helpful.

I have a question and its kinda not relevant to this article, I've got both git and WSL set up, but the big issue with WSL is, that its not able to access the reasources that i already have on my windows for example node, python, java and so on.

But i do wanted to experience the Z-Shell without hassle of WSL and this article helped me a lot,

My question is-:
Is there a way to set up an alias command for git-bash and invoke from any directory when needed via powershell so i can use zsh directly in that directory when needed?

Sounds dumb but i want powershell to be default but i also want to set up git in a way that it can access git-bash and Z-shell from anywhere like we can do with cmd (whenever we type cmd it start working directly into powershell).

basically what i want to achieve is when i type "gsh" git bash opens up in the way cmd does when used via pwsh.

UPDATE: I found the solution on stack overflow again thanks for this article.

ngotienthien • Jun 27 '20

how i change start directory when i open in contextmeu

Arjun Porwal • Jun 28 '20

tried my best , but could not find a working way 😅

Linh Nguyen Vu • Jun 4 '20

How to set Cmder to default terminal of VSCode bro ?

Arjun Porwal • Jun 4 '20

You can do it in VSCode using these commands in settings.json

   "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Users\\Username\\Cmder\\Cmder.exe",
   "terminal.external.windowsExec": "C:\\Users\\Username\Cmder\\Cmder.exe",

replace the path to cmder with yours ,
even if you set it , it wont run as inbuilt terminal in VSCode , it is only possible to launch it externally.

Linh Nguyen Vu • Jun 4 '20

Thanks bro.

Harun Kilic • Oct 2 '20 • Edited

It is actually possible with those lines in settings.json in VScode:

    "terminal.external.windowsExec": "C:\\Cmder\\Cmder.exe",
    "terminal.integrated.shell.windows":   "C:\\Cygwin64\\bin\\bash.exe",
    "terminal.integrated.shellArgs.windows": ["-lic", "cd $OLDPWD; exec zsh"]

Reza Asriano Maulana • Mar 26 '23

I'm still confused at the step "Do the same for Admin Privileges , rename it as {cygwin:ZSH as Admin} and replace command with
*C:\cygwin64\bin\mintty.exe /usr/bin/zsh --login -i -new_console:d:%USERPROFILE%"

Please help me

Oliver Sagala • Jul 28 '21

When I type something on my terminal, I get random ←[?1h←[?1h caused by zsh-autosuggestions.

How do I solve this?

Nikos Kanakis • Mar 22 '20

I will definetely try it !!!

Arjun Porwal • Mar 22 '20

Hope You find it Awesome and Easy ! 🤘

Paras 🧙‍♂️ • Mar 21 '20

great post !!! 👏👏👏🎉🎉

Arjun Porwal • Mar 21 '20

Thanks !

Deeplobo • Nov 21 '23

bal, baichhha thakle ei kaj ar na korim! (fuck you windows)

Keerikadan03 • May 11

the link for cmder is wrong
cmder.app/

this is the right link

Axsel Riando S • Feb 2 '21

i can't do a command like 'cd' anyone have the same issue?

Fernando Ropero • Jan 21 '21

Customizing Cygwin & Oh-my-zsh
step four is not clear to me, I don't know what to do, I can't find any files .minttyrc

Đặng Trần Quyền • Mar 3 '21

How can we emmed this to Visual Studio Code ?

Georg Ferdinand Weidner • Mar 22 '22

Hey there,

can not do this one "git clone git://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh.git ~/.oh-my-zsh", because of new policy of git. Does anyone has an alternative link?

Barış Velioğlu • Jul 13 '22 • Edited

You can use git clone https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh.git ~/.oh-my-zsh