.Files

These files are an accumulation of bash and zsh aliases, shortcuts and functions that i have collected over the years.

Cross-platform: aliases that wrap commands with Linux/macOS differences (GNU vs BSD flags, trash paths, DNS flush, screen lock) detect the OS at source-time and pick the right invocation. Same alias name on both platforms, the right command behind it.

Install

Clone and run:

git clone https://github.com/aamnah/dotfiles && cd dotfiles && ./install.sh

Or run remotely without cloning (fetches each file from raw.githubusercontent.com):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aamnah/dotfiles/master/install.sh | bash -s -- --remote

install.sh backs up any existing target as <file>.bak.<timestamp> before overwriting, and installs starship if it's missing. It does not change your login shell — see the Shell section below for chsh.

Shell

The repo supports both bash and zsh with feature parity in mind — pick whichever shell you prefer on a given machine. Both sets of startup files are tracked, and install.sh deploys both regardless of which shell is currently active, so switching shells on a box doesn't require re-running anything.

zsh is the default shell on macOS (since Catalina, 2019) and Kali Linux. On most other systems — Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch, Alpine, and the standard Docker base images — bash (or sh) is the default and zsh has to be installed explicitly:

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install zsh
# Fedora/RHEL: sudo dnf install zsh
# Arch:        sudo pacman -S zsh
# Alpine:      sudo apk add zsh

# Set as login shell (takes effect on next login)
chsh -s "$(which zsh)" "$USER"

install.sh does not run chsh for you — switching login shells is an explicit opt-in.

Startup files

zsh	runs when	bash equivalent	what to put here
.zshenv	every zsh invocation — interactive, login, scripts, cron, GUI launches	(no real equivalent)	PATH and env vars that everything needs to see
.zprofile	login shells only, before .zshrc	.bash_profile	login-once setup (e.g. ssh-agent autostart, tmux auto-attach)
.zshrc	interactive shells (every new tab)	.bashrc	aliases, functions, prompt, completion, keybindings
.zlogin	login shells, after .zshrc	(.bash_login, rare)	login-once setup that needs the shell already configured
.zlogout	on logout from a login shell	.bash_logout	cleanup on exit

In practice most personal config can live in .zshrc without issue. The split matters when:

• Something must run only once per session — the canonical example is ssh-agent. Put it in .zshrc and every new terminal tab spawns a fresh agent; put it in .zprofile and every tab/subshell inherits the same SSH_AUTH_SOCK.
• Something must be visible to non-interactive contexts — cron jobs, GUI-launched apps, and scripts only source .zshenv. PATH belongs there for that reason.

bash collapses this distinction more aggressively: .bash_profile is the login file, .bashrc the interactive file, and many setups source the latter from the former so the same content runs in both contexts. There's no .bash_env analog — bash has nothing that runs for every invocation including scripts.

Config files

.nanorc

Default nano:

Custom config:

.config/

Editor and terminal configs that live under XDG-style paths:

• .config/kitty/kitty.conf — kitty terminal config
• .config/nvim/init.lua — Neovim config (tabs/indents, line numbers)
• .config/starship.toml — Starship prompt (see above)
• .config/tmux/tmux.conf — tmux config; themes live alongside it as .config/tmux/lasik.tmux, .config/tmux/catppuccin.tmux, and .config/tmux/reset.tmux. A root .tmux.conf shim sources this XDG config for compatibility.

.bash_aliases / .zsh_aliases

Shortcuts for directories, programs, system processes and commands. Both files contain the same universal toolset, byte-identical at the source level. The only structural difference is dang (uses bash's history -p vs zsh's fc -ln -1 since shell builtins differ).

Directories

• desk go to Desktop — cd ~/Desktop
• dl go to Downloads — cd ~/Downloads

Smart Listings (cross-platform: GNU --color= vs BSD -G)

• ll List all (-a) files and directories in a detailed (-l), human readable (-h), color coded way with a trailing slash (-F)
• ls Coloured short listing — ls -hF + colour
• l Coloured line-based listing instead of columns — ls -aFx + colour
• lsd Only list directories, including hidden ones — ls -dl */ .[^.]*/
• la List all (incl. hidden) — ls -A
• tree Always list the tree command in color coding — tree -C

Search

• grep, egrep, fgrep Always coloured — --color=always

Tools

• c Shortcut for claude
• kkk Kill the current tmux session — tmux kill-session

IPs

• myip Show public IP via curl — curl ifconfig.me
• ip Show public IP via OpenDNS — dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com
• localip Show local IP — ipconfig getifaddr en0 (macOS) / hostname -I (Linux)

Misc.

• emptytrash Empty the Trash on all mounted volumes and the main HDD — /Volumes/*/.Trashes + ~/.Trash (macOS) / ~/.local/share/Trash/ (Linux, XDG spec)
• cleanup Recursively delete .DS_Store files — find . -type f -name '*.DS_Store' -delete
• chromekill Kill all the tabs in Chrome to free up memory (preserves extensions). Cross-platform regex matches both Chrome Helper (macOS) and chrome (Linux)
• afk Lock the screen (when going AFK) — CGSession -suspend (macOS) / loginctl lock-session → xdg-screensaver lock (Linux)
• reload Reload the shell (i.e. invoke as a login shell) — exec $SHELL -l

Sudo

• dang repeat the last command with sudo, basically sudo !! equivalent

Disk Usage

• ducks List top ten largest files/directories in current directory, human-readable — du -chs * | sort -rh | head -11
• ds Find the biggest in a folder — du -ks * | sort -n

Memory

• wotgobblemem What's gobbling the memory? — ps sorted by memory %, top 15

DNS

• flushdns Flush DNS cache — dscacheutil -flushcache + killall -HUP mDNSResponder (macOS) / resolvectl flush-caches chain (Linux)

Security

• netlisteners Show active network listeners — lsof -i -P | grep LISTEN

What's not in the repo

Personal/machine-specific aliases (project dirs, SSH host shortcuts, school course dirs) live in your local ~/.zsh_aliases only — they reference paths and hosts that don't exist on a fresh machine, so they're not committed.

bash

.bash_profile

• PS1 - Prompt shows only current working directory \w and \$. Newline at both beginning and end makes differentiating command output easier
• Prompt uses starship when available, falling back to the manual git-aware PS1 on minimal boxes (VPS, Docker images) where starship isn't installed.

custom prompt with Starship

Cross-shell prompt configured by .config/starship.toml. Same config drives bash and zsh, so the prompt looks identical in both. Two-line layout adapted from Kali Linux's default zsh prompt:

┌──[~/path] (branch) status
└─$

Colours come from a [palettes.lasik] palette that mirrors the Lasik VSCode theme — edit the hex values in one place and every module updates.

• ┌──[, ], └─, and the branch parens — muted (dark navy, intentionally low-contrast frame)
• path and $ — blue
• branch name — yellow; git status — peach
• $ flips to red on non-zero exit (visual feedback for the last command)
• git branch + status modules render after the path when in a repo

install.sh installs the starship binary if it's missing — brew install starship on macOS, the official installer (curl -sS https://starship.rs/install.sh | sh) elsewhere — then drops starship.toml into ~/.config/. To install manually:

# binary
curl -sS https://starship.rs/install.sh | sh

# activate (one line per shell rc)
echo 'eval "$(starship init bash)"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'eval "$(starship init zsh)"'  >> ~/.zshrc

.bash_functions / .zsh_functions

Both files are kept in full parity — same functions, same behaviour. The only differences are the shebang and the file header. Pick whichever shell you're in; everything below works identically.

• take() — create a dir (with parents if needed) and cd into it

• ii() — compact MOTD-style host summary: timestamp, hostname + kernel + distro, local + public IP, uptime, load average, process count, memory and disk with coloured 10-char usage bars (white <60%, yellow 60–84%, red ≥85%), and logged-in users. Cross-platform (Linux + macOS), self-contained ANSI colours, gracefully degrades when commands or /etc/os-release aren't available.

  

• getwebsite() — wget a whole site for offline reading (-r -p -k -np -l 5, ignores robots.txt, randomised wait between requests). Static HTML only — for SPA / JS-heavy sites use httrack or monolith.

• spy() — identify active network connections by port or process name (e.g. spy 8080, spy chrome). Wraps lsof -i -P +c 0 +M and pipes through awk so the column header is preserved while the body is filtered (naive grep would drop the header). Case-insensitive literal match — IPs like 127.0.0.1 work as-is. Without sudo, only your own processes are shown.

  

• t() — load a tmuxp.yaml layout from the current dir, falling back to ~/.tmuxp/default.yaml, falling back to a plain tmux new session named after the cwd. Auto-injects session_name and start_directory if the config lacks them. Sanitises session name (tmux disallows . and :) and falls back cleanly when tmuxp isn't installed.

Removed in recent revisions: extract() (use the archive tool directly), sniff() (use tcpdump / tshark), bell() (terminal-bell-on-completion was unreliable across emulators — also why enable_audio_bell came out of kitty.conf).

Links

• Take a look at Command Line Fu for some really cool commands