Zen Theme for Oh-My-Zsh

June 4, 2026 · View on GitHub

Zen Theme Screenshot

Overview

Zen is a clean, informative, and customizable theme for Oh-My-Zsh that provides essential information without cluttering your terminal. It was designed with Python developers in mind and includes smart features like SSH detection, detailed Git status information, and command execution time tracking.

Features

  • Clean and Minimal Design: Provides essential information without cluttering your terminal
  • Smart Context Awareness:
    • SSH detection with color changes for remote sessions (blue username, purple hostname)
    • Root user detection with special prompt symbol (red # for root)
    • Last command status indication (red $ for failed commands)
  • Enhanced Git Integration:
    • Shows branch name with colored angle brackets (‹branch›)
    • Clean status indicator (✓)
    • Detailed change indicators (staged, unstaged, untracked)
    • Ahead/behind tracking with up/down arrows and counts
    • Stash count indicator
    • Detached HEAD, merge, rebase, cherry-pick, bisect, and conflict indicators
  • Development Environment Indicators:
    • Virtual environment display in right prompt
    • Optional Python version display for the active virtual environment
    • Command execution time for long-running commands (shows time for commands >5s)
  • Flexible Layout Options:
    • One-line or two-line prompt formats
    • Optional time display
  • Flexible Path Display:
    • Full path or truncated path options
    • Configurable number of directory levels to display

Installation

Manual Installation

  1. Clone this repository:

    git clone https://github.com/thecrazygm/zen.git

  2. Copy or symlink the theme file to your Oh-My-Zsh themes directory:

    cp zen/zen.zsh-theme ~/.oh-my-zsh/themes/
# OR create a symlink
ln -s $(pwd)/zen/zen.zsh-theme ~/.oh-my-zsh/themes/

  3. Set ZSH_THEME="zen" in your ~/.zshrc file

  4. Restart your terminal or run source ~/.zshrc

Configuration

Zen theme supports several configuration options that can be set in your ~/.zshrc file:

# Show current time in prompt
export ZEN_THEME_SHOW_TIME=true

# Use two-line prompt format
export ZEN_THEME_TWO_LINES=true

# Show execution time for commands that take longer than 5 seconds
export ZEN_THEME_SHOW_EXEC_TIME=true

# Show the active virtual environment's Python version
export ZEN_THEME_SHOW_PYTHON_VERSION=true

# Show execution time for commands that take longer than 100ms
export ZEN_THEME_EXEC_TIME_THRESHOLD=0.1

# Configure path truncation (0=full path, 1=current dir only, 2+=show n dirs)
export ZEN_THEME_PATH_TRUNCATE=2

# Disable terminal window title updates
export ZEN_THEME_DISABLE_WINDOW_TITLE=true

Customization

The theme uses standard ZSH color codes and configurable Unicode symbols. Set symbol overrides in your ~/.zshrc before Oh-My-Zsh loads the theme:

export ZEN_THEME_SYMBOL_BRANCH_PREFIX="["
export ZEN_THEME_SYMBOL_BRANCH_SUFFIX="]"
export ZEN_THEME_SYMBOL_CLEAN="ok"
export ZEN_THEME_SYMBOL_STAGED="+"
export ZEN_THEME_SYMBOL_UNSTAGED="!"
export ZEN_THEME_SYMBOL_UNTRACKED="?"
export ZEN_THEME_SYMBOL_AHEAD="up"
export ZEN_THEME_SYMBOL_BEHIND="down"
export ZEN_THEME_SYMBOL_STASH="stash"
export ZEN_THEME_SYMBOL_CONFLICT="conflict"
export ZEN_THEME_SYMBOL_PYTHON="python "

Execution time supports fractional thresholds when your Zsh provides EPOCHREALTIME; otherwise it falls back to second-level timing.

Python version display is cached per active VIRTUAL_ENV, so prompt redraws do not repeatedly start Python.

Credits

Created by Michael Garcia (thecrazygm), inspired by various themes including Aphrodite, Solus, and others.

License

MIT License

The Crazy GM