Hyper: Own Your Terminal

What is Hyper

Hyper terminal is a highly customizable terminal built on web technologies, based on JavaScript, HTML and CSS. The reason for the conception of Hyper was to create a beautiful and extensible experience for command-line interface users, as mentioned on its official website. It is an open-source and cross-platform electron-based application. Hyper is compatible with Windows, macOS and Linux operating systems.

Why we like it

Working as Software Development Interns we basically spend almost all of our time using the terminal. It is quite boring staring at a plain black screen the entire day.

So we thought why not find a terminal which we can customize according to our taste? That’s how we came across Hyper.

(Warning: You may end up wasting hours trying out all the different plugins Hyper provides)

Plugins

Along with the fun and colourful plugins which will make your terminal look more interesting, there are a lot of useful ones that have made our lives a lot easier.

The best part is that customising Hyper is as easy as adding a plugin name to the config file (~/.hyper.js).

Click on the menu icon on the upper left corner of your terminal, then go to Edit >> Preferences.

This will open the file which you edit to add/remove plugins.

module.exports = {
    . . .,
    plugins: [
        "hyper-clean",
        "<other-plugins-here>"
    ]
};

Themes

hyper-rose-pine

It is one of the more popular themes for Hyper terminal. We particularly like this theme because of its pastel and minimalistic look.

hyper-star-wars

If you’re a Star Wars fan, then look no further. The plugin offers 24 tailor-made, full-fledged Star Wars themes for your terminal.

hyper-clean

Aesthetically pleasing and different from your usual themes, you can use this theme with the hyperborder plugin to get a gradient-like effect on your terminal. (You can change the colour, width, etc using the hyperborder plugin, refer to the documentation linked above for the same)

hyper-paper-color

Personally not a fan of light themes but this one is not too bright or harsh on your eyes and gives a very natural and paper-like feel, justifying its name.

hyper-pokemon

Bring your favourite pokemon to your terminal!

Useful

hyper-search

Lets you do a hassle-free text-search within your Hyper Terminal.

hyper-spotify

Now you can control Spotify from within the Hyper tab.

hyper-drop-file

Just drag and drop your file to get its path and make life easier.

hypernpm

Keyboard shortcuts for your everyday npm commands!

hyper-opacity

Set opacity of your terminal according to your requirement. Compatible with Windows and macOS.

hypercwd

Open a new Hyper tab with the same directory as the current tab.

Fun

gitrocket

Launches a rocket ship in your terminal when you push code with Git!

hyperpower

Adds the pixel-explosion and shake effect that’s been implemented in several text editors.

hypergravity

Adds a weird but fun gravity effect.

hyper-letters

Drops entered letters physically in your terminal.

hyper-cat

If you ever feel like pranking your coworkers, just add this plugin to their hyper terminal.

All images have been taken from the official public pages of the above-mentioned plugins on npmjs.org.

This post was co-authored by Shefali Tripathi and Joyoti Disha Rajbongshi.