# Oh My Zsh

34 Hacker News commenters recommended Oh My Zsh and 29 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 8 years (4 owners).

**Verdict:** Recommended for a ready-to-use zsh setup with useful defaults, aliases and plugins. Critics say it adds bloat and can slow shell startup, especially in large Git repositories.

## Why people recommend it

- Easy to install and set up (6 comments): "It's a single command to install oh-my-zsh. I can fire it off, check Slack, and come back in 5 minutes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563067)) "OMZ is still easier to set up consistently. That's why we use it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563066)) "The main selling point for me is how easy it is to setup." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563150))
- Fast enough for daily use (4 comments): "I originally switched to ZSH + Oh My Shell because it opens so fast." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564332)) "with the default configuration it's only 60ms on my laptop" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562942)) "It's 0.04s in my setup. I have it a bit customized" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563633))
- Useful aliases and plugins (3 comments): "even better, I recently learned I can just `gst` on oh-my-zsh for `git status` and other similar shortcuts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49578639)) "I prefer oh-my-zsh plugin style short aliases instead" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922884)) "I relied on some useful Oh My Zsh features" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564299))
- Good defaults out of the box (3 comments): "I can get a good shell experience out of the box and immediately start working on stuff productively" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562912)) "Nice history, command auto complete, and similar beyond just the looks, out of the box" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564362)) "If only zsh had a better out of the box experience then OMZ wouldn't be needed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563773))

## What people warn about

- Bloated with features people never use (6 comments): "people pick up OMZ or doom emacs because some YouTuber told them to do it, then drop them in 6 months because they're all bloaty" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564643)) "the features I uses are so basic, it really does not warrant a whole software project as a dependency" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562931)) "90 percent of the plug-ins are alias definitions which I certainly won't memorize somebody else's" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46566670))
- Slow startup and prompt lag (5 comments): "My experience was terrible. But it turns out that many people did not mind the bloat and the prompt lag." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564668)) "I encounter a lot of issues with Ghostty with Oh My Zsh. It's often very slow, the shell crashes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46150937)) "I never felt the delay particularly unless I was in a very large Git repository" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46572632))
- Users switch to plain shell (3 comments): "I use a subset of omz by cloning it and manually sourcing the plugins I want myself rather than initializing the entire omz system." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569162)) "I have been using OMZ for the last 8 years but recently made the switch to plain zsh" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563436)) "In the end, I realised nothing was as good (to me) as my original Bash set up." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563972))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Zim (zimfw)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zim.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Oh My Zsh", https://hackerapproved.com/p/oh-my-zsh/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).