We spend all day in the terminal, so why not have it say nice things to you to start your day off right? Using Friendly Terminal, you terminal will display a random motivational message from a selection you have created.
Set up takes ~10 minutes and you too can have friendly messages every joyous day.
This program consists of three parts (two that you are likely to want to modify):
- A text file of affirmations that you will have selected.
- A Python file that will select a random affirmation from your text file.
- An added line in your .bash_profile that prints the selected affirmation when the terminal is opened. Let's get started!
You will:
- Clone this repo
- Try out the program (optional)
- Add program to your .bash_profile
- Add quotes & randline file to home directory
- Open a fresh terminal & smile!
- Customize your quotes (optional)
Navigate to your home directory /Users/username/ and clone this repo. In the terminal, navigating to your home directory can be done with cd ~/.
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/vzhz/friendly_terminal.git
Anywhere you see /Users/username/, you can use a ~/ instead.
(optional)
If you haven't already used it for the first step, find your shell (e.g. you may be using zshrc or bash) and add
python3 /Users/username/friendly_terminal/randline.py /Users/username/friendly_terminal/quotes_for_terminal.txt [your name]</code>
Substitute the name you would like to be greeted by for [your name]!
Your terminal will return one greeting each time you run this command, so run it as many times as you like to preview your encouraging phrases.
Navigate to your home directory and open your .bash_profile using your terminal:
cd ~
editor_name .bash_profile
If you need to search for your file you can do so with find ~/ -type f -name ".bash_profile". This will search your home directory (where your bash profile is likely stored) for a file called .bash_profile. Using Mac's Spotlight will strip the "." before searching and you won't find your file.
If you do not have a .bash_profile, navigate to your home directory and (in your terminal) type your editor of choice .bash_profile to create and open the file.
Once you open your .bash_profile, add
<code>python3 /Users/<username>/randline.py /Users/<username>/quotes_for_terminal.txt</code> [your name]
the same way you did in your terminal earlier. If you haven't already, you're likely to be adding lots of customizations to your .bash_profile in the future, so it would be a good idea to add a comment explaining that this line runs the Friendly Terminal app!
Either drag-and-drop or use your terminal:
cd friend_terminal/
cp randline.py quotes_for_terminal.txt ~/
It should say something nice to you!
(optional)
Make your terminal say whatever will make you feel good. The text file starts with a few encouraging phrases. My favorite is "you look very nice tonight and you are very smart" but some people might be motivated by a nice "get to work, you fucker." You do you. This is optional - there are lots of good phrases in there already!
Hurrah! Now you have a (even) friendly(er) terminal!
We welcome your contributions in pretty much any form.
Have an idea for expanding Friendly Terminal? Create an issue (or comment on an existing one)!
Want to make your own modifications and share what you've done? Fork & get started on a pull request. (This repo has a step-by-step guide to for using Github as a first-time contributor). (Feel free to open an issue so we can start a conversation about your plans too!)
Friendly Terminal is released under the MIT license.