eza Setup: Icons and Colors for Terminal Listings

First PublishedMay 5, 2026ByAtif Alam

eza is a fast, Rust-based directory lister for the terminal: icons, colors, tree view, and optional git column without Ruby gems.

Install

brew install eza

Aliases for ~/.zshrc

nano ~/.zshrc

Append:

# eza — ls replacement (icons, trees)
alias ls='eza --icons --group-directories-first'
alias ll='eza -lhA --icons --group-directories-first'
alias lt='eza --tree --icons --level=2'
alias lta='eza --tree --icons --long -h --level=3'

Reload:

source ~/.zshrc

Usage

Command	Description
ls	Colorized list with icons (via alias)
ll	Long listing, hidden files, human-readable sizes
lt	Tree view, depth 2
lta	Tree with sizes, depth 3
eza --level=4	Tree with custom depth
lt /Volumes/YourDrive	Tree of a mounted volume (substitute your path)

Common Flags

Interpret these tokens as eza options:

--icons                     # icons
-l, --long                  # permissions, owner, size, time
-a, --all                   # include hidden entries
-h                         # human-readable sizes (prefer -h; --human-readable is rejected on some eza builds)
--tree                      # nested layout
--level=N                   # cap tree depth
--group-directories-first   # folders before files
--git                       # short git hints per row
--sort=name|modified|size|ext   # common sort fields

Example One-Liners

eza --tree --long -h --level=2 /Volumes/YourDrive

eza -lh --sort=size

eza -lah --git ~/projects/myrepo

eza -D

Why eza Instead of colorls

Ruby-based colorls is easy to break on newer macOS; it depends on gems and interpreter versions your shell may not guarantee.

Topic	colorls	eza
Language	Ruby gem	Rust binary
Speed	Slow	Fast
Maintenance	Mostly abandoned	Actively maintained
Dependencies	Ruby, gems	Single binary via Homebrew
Apple Silicon / recent macOS	Often problematic	Widely used

Together with lsd and plain ls, eza is a pragmatic default when you want icons, trees, and consistent performance without a Ruby stack.