Migrating off Zplug to load Zsh faster

Zplug was slowing me down, so I stripped things back to basics for speed.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Diagnosing and Finding the Bottlenecks
  3. Proposing a Solution
  4. Packaging It All in Your Dotfiles
  5. Reloading Your Optimized Environment

1. Introduction

After a few years of using Zplug as my Zsh plugin manager, I realized it was slow and increasingly burdensome. My machine - a 10-year-old Mac - was struggling with several unnecessary plugins, background updates, and outdated scripts. This bloat made my developer experience a pain. Every terminal session felt sluggish, draining time and patience.

The inefficiencies were no longer tolerable, and it was time to rework my configuration.

2. Diagnosing and Finding the Bottlenecks

When developing in a polyglot environment, it’s easy to accumulate a lot of small scripts to manage tools like Node.js, rbenv, or pyenv. The problem with Zplug was that it eagerly loaded these environments every time I launched a terminal session, regardless of whether I needed them.

On top of that, my Zplug setup loaded:

  • Multiple environment managers at startup (e.g., pyenv, rbenv, nvm)
  • A highly customized theme that slowed down prompt rendering
  • Plugins I rarely used, all being loaded simultaneously

This eager loading combined with Zplug’s overhead resulted in slow shell startup times, frustrating me with every new terminal session.

3. Proposing a Solution

Tabula Rasa: Start Fresh

I decided to wipe my configuration and start from scratch. I drew inspiration from Oh My Zsh, which offers a streamlined way to manage plugins and libraries.

Key changes I made:

  1. Remove environment managers (e.g., pyenv, rbenv, nvm) from the startup.
    • These tools are now lazily loaded only when needed.
  2. Simplify the theme by switching to a minimal one like Agnoster.
    • Fancy themes look cool but come at the cost of performance.
    • I further modified agnoster directly as a separate file
  3. Minimal plugin setup:
    • Use only the core plugins I need regularly, keeping the configuration lean and fast.

4. Packaging It All in Your Dotfiles

Here’s what my optimized plugin configuration looks like in a omz.zsh sript, my dotfiles are based of holman dotfiles repo:

plugins=(
  git
  git-extras
  last-working-dir
  zsh-syntax-highlighting
  zsh-history-substring-search
)

With just these essential plugins, the terminal loads almost instantly. My dotfiles are now modular and minimal, focusing only on the critical tools I need day-to-day.

You can store this configuration in your dotfiles repository to keep it version-controlled and easily portable between machines.

5. Reloading Your Optimized Environment

By going back to basics, I was able to save several seconds on every shell launch. This may seem small, but for someone who lives in the terminal, the cumulative effect is significant with an old mac, but I bet this optimization could be bulletproof as your machine starts aging.

Before Optimization

•	5-15 seconds to load a new Zsh session
•	Occasional lag when typing commands due to slow prompts

After Optimization

•	Almost instant terminal sessions (Sometimes I leave nvm load by default, it's bearable for now, but this might change)
•	No more unexpected lag or bloat

The terminal feels snappy again, and I can focus on developing efficiently.

What’s Next?

Now that my Zsh configuration is optimized, I’m ready for the next challenge: migrating off IDEs to Neovim. Stay tuned for the next article, where I share my experience ditching heavy IDEs for a lighter, more customizable workflow using Neovim.