Command line aliases are extremely helpful, enabling you to create shortcuts for longer commands and even replace one command with another. Since zsh has become the default shell in Terminal for macOS and is widely adopted due to Oh-My-Zsh, you might be curious about how to set up and utilize aliases with the zsh shell.

How to Set Up an Alias in zsh

Zsh aliases are kept in the user’s .zshrc file located in the home directory. This hidden file begins with a period to indicate its hidden status. Therefore, editing this file is necessary to configure aliases.

1. Open the Terminal app if it's not already open.
2. Use the following command to edit the .zshrc file in your home directory with nano: nano ~/.zshrc.
3. Add your desired alias or aliases to the end of this text file using the following structure, placing each new alias on a separate line: alias (aliasname)="command"

For instance, to create an alias named "fullinstallers" that lists all available full installers for macOS using the softwareupdate command with the –list-full-installers flag, the syntax would look like this:

alias fullinstallers="softwareupdate --list-full-installers"

Another example, if you installed gcc with Homebrew on the Mac and wish to simplify running gcc instead of clang, you could use the following alias:

alias gcc="gcc-13"

Another example is creating an alias if you often type a lengthy command to connect to a specific ssh server, such as:

alias remoteshell='ssh -p 123123 username@remote.shell.domain.com'

11. Ensure each alias is placed on a new line.
12. After finishing modifications to your .zshrc file with aliases, press Control O to save in nano, followed by Control X to exit.
13. Back at the command line, use the source command to reload the shell profile configuration: source ~/.zshrc

Your new alias or aliases are now ready to use at the command line; simply type the command linked to the alias, and it will execute. Using the examples above, that would be 'remoteshell', 'gcc', and 'fullinstallers'.

If you use Oh-My-Zsh on the Mac, you might want to run the ‘a(chǎn)lias’ command first since there are many preloaded aliases in your .zshrc file that you might otherwise set up manually, such as using color with ls.

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