Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Oh My Zsh VS Tailwind CSS

Compare Oh My Zsh VS Tailwind CSS and see what are their differences

Oh My Zsh logo Oh My Zsh

A delightful community-driven framework for managing your zsh configuration.

Tailwind CSS logo Tailwind CSS

A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.
  • Oh My Zsh Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-19
  • Tailwind CSS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-13

Oh My Zsh features and specs

  • Plugin Ecosystem
    Oh My Zsh offers a wide variety of plugins that extend the functionality of your shell, including git integration, syntax highlighting, and auto-suggestions.
  • Themes
    It provides a rich collection of themes that allow you to customize the look and feel of your terminal, making it visually appealing and easier to use.
  • Community Support
    With a large, active community, users can find a wealth of resources, tutorials, and support for troubleshooting and expanding their Zsh configuration.
  • Ease of Use
    Oh My Zsh simplifies the management of Zsh configurations through a straightforward installation process and easy-to-use commands for adding and removing plugins and themes.
  • Highly Configurable
    Even though it simplifies many aspects of Zsh, Oh My Zsh still allows for deep customization tailored to individual workflow needs.

Possible disadvantages of Oh My Zsh

  • Performance Overheads
    Using Oh My Zsh can slow down shell startup time, especially if many plugins or a complex theme are enabled.
  • Over-reliance on Plugins
    Users may become dependent on Oh My Zsh's extensive plugin system, which could discourage them from learning and understanding native Zsh scripting.
  • Potential for Conflicts
    Adding multiple plugins and custom scripts can lead to conflicts and bugs, making the shell environment unstable or unpredictable.
  • Large Install Size
    The framework with all its plugins and themes can take up a significant amount of disk space, which may be a consideration for users with limited storage.
  • Updates and Maintenance
    Regular updates are necessary to keep the system secure and up-to-date, which can be a hassle for users who prefer a 'set it and forget it' approach.

Tailwind CSS features and specs

  • Utility-First Approach
    Tailwind CSS uses a utility-first approach, promoting the use of small, reusable utility classes to style elements directly in your markup. This can lead to more readable and maintainable HTML.
  • Customization
    The framework is highly customizable. You can easily configure its default theme, add your extensions, and create custom utilities. Tailwind’s config file allows for deep customization of all aspects of the framework.
  • Consistent Design
    Using utility classes ensures design consistency because the same classes will apply the same styles globally.
  • Responsive Design
    Tailwind CSS has excellent built-in support for responsive design. You can easily apply different styles for different screen sizes using responsive utility variants.
  • Performance
    Tailwind purges unused CSS in production, resulting in smaller final output files and improved performance.
  • Integrates Well with Frameworks
    Tailwind CSS integrates smoothly with modern JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular.
  • JIT Compiler
    The Just-in-Time (JIT) mode in Tailwind CSS generates styles on-demand, reducing the development build sizes and speeding up the development process.

Possible disadvantages of Tailwind CSS

  • Steep Learning Curve
    For developers coming from traditional CSS or other CSS frameworks, getting used to Tailwind's utility-first approach may take some time.
  • HTML Congestion
    Due to the utility-first approach, HTML files can get filled with numerous utility classes, making it look cluttered and harder to read.
  • Initial Setup
    Setting up Tailwind CSS initially can be complex, especially for beginners. Configuration settings and integrations with build tools can be confusing.
  • Verbosity
    Some developers find the inline utility classes verbose, particularly when complex styles are required, which can lead to bloated template files.
  • Limited Abstractions
    Tailwind doesn't provide higher-level abstractions such as components out of the box, like other frameworks (e.g., Bootstrap) do. Developers need to build and maintain these abstractions themselves.
  • Dependency Tailoring
    While Tailwind aims to be minimalistic, it may enforce some dependencies or build tool integrations that could be unnecessary for very simple projects.

Analysis of Oh My Zsh

Overall verdict

  • Oh My Zsh is generally considered a good choice for those who frequently use the command line, offering both convenience and powerful customization options. However, some users might find it to be overly complex if they prefer a minimal or lightweight setup.

Why this product is good

  • Oh My Zsh is a popular framework for managing the Zsh configuration. It offers a wide range of plugins and themes that enhance and customize the user experience of the terminal. It simplifies many complex tasks through its extensive set of features and is maintained by a large community, which ensures its reliability and frequent updates.

Recommended for

  • Developers who want to improve their command line experience with additional features.
  • Users who appreciate having a wide selection of themes and plugins to personalize their terminal environment.
  • Individuals looking for a community-supported and regularly updated framework.

Oh My Zsh videos

You Really Don't Need Oh My Zsh And Here's Why (Rant)

More videos:

  • Review - Working with Linux - Terminal, Zsh & Oh My Zsh
  • Review - Uninstall Oh My ZSH Right Now And Do This Instead

Tailwind CSS videos

Why I Don't Like Tailwind CSS

More videos:

  • Review - Vanilla CSS vs Bootstrap vs Tailwind CSS - Which one should you choose?
  • Review - Get Started with Tailwind CSS in 15 Minutes

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Oh My Zsh and Tailwind CSS)
Developer Tools
8 8%
92% 92
Programming
100 100%
0% 0
Design Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Oh My Zsh and Tailwind CSS. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Oh My Zsh and Tailwind CSS

Oh My Zsh Reviews

  1. Stan
    · Founder at SaaSHub ·
    Indispensable

    This has become an indispensable tool for me. One of the first thing to install on a new computer.

    🏁 Competitors: GNU Bourne Again SHell, fish shell

Tailwind CSS Reviews

  1. Awesome framework

    I use it in all my current projects. It's easy to start and very customisable. Love it so much! I improved the speed of development 2x times by using Tailwind.


22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
Tailwind CSS comes with features such as responsive design, customizability, hover, focus, and active states out of the box. These enable developers to build sophisticated, interactive interfaces with ease. When it comes to integrations, Tailwind CSS can be integrated with popular front-end frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, enhancing its utility across different...
Source: thectoclub.com
15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
If you want to learn the valuable skill of Tailwind CSS, we highly recommend taking the "Tailwind CSS From Scratch" course by Brad Traversy on Udemy. In this introductory course, you will build great-looking layouts quickly and efficiently using Tailwind CSS utility classes.
Source: coursesity.com
10 Best Free React UI Libraries in 2023
TailwindCSS is a utility-first CSS framework designed to build modern and beautiful websites in no time. Here, utility class names define what to do. Each utility class comes with pre-defined CSS properties.
11 Best Material UI Alternatives
Tailwind CSS promotes a modular approach to styling, where devs can combine classes to create unique and responsive designs. It offers utilities for layout, typography, colors, spacing, and more, allowing developers to create consistent and visually appealing interfaces with minimal effort.
Source: www.uxpin.com
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
Tailwind enables faster development of the front-end. Instead of a default theme or built-in UI components, you’d get pre-designed widget menus and utility classes to build your website. Tailwind has modular components, and if you make changes in one place, other parts of your code won’t get impacted. Tailwind requires the least amount of learning and is easy to use. You can...
Source: hackr.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tailwind CSS seems to be a lot more popular than Oh My Zsh. While we know about 1015 links to Tailwind CSS, we've tracked only 74 mentions of Oh My Zsh. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Oh My Zsh mentions (74)

  • Installing Terraform
    To start this re-learning journey, I feel like I should start with setting up a VPC on my AWS account. I already have an account so I will not be writing about that. However, since I want to do all of this via IaC, I need to setup Terraform. Luckily for me, this is a new laptop so I have nothing setup on it, besides iTerm2. Btw, I am using https://ohmyz.sh/ for my shell, so shout out to that team. This is what... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Bash vs. Zsh: Key differences and when to use each
    Oh My Zsh is an open-source Zsh framework used to add extra functionalities for Zsh, turbocharging the entire Zsh user experience. Oh My Zsh’s extra advanced features cause users who frequently use the terminal to gravitate towards Zsh. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Switching from tmux to Zellij
    That's it! Happy CLI mastery with Zellij, Oh My zsh and Alacritty! - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • The easiest way to set up and configure your AWS CLI
    If you are using Oh My ZSH as your shell of choice, you can add plugins=(... Aws ) to your .zshrc / profile and besides having autocomplete for the AWS CLI you will also immediately see in the terminal window what is the current AWS profile you are logged in. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • My Terminal Setup for 2025 🚀
    ZSH and Oh My ZSH offer superpowers to your terminal thanks to its customization and wide variety of plugins. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
View more

Tailwind CSS mentions (1015)

  • How to add markdown to a Next.js project
    This article assumes the reader is a developer that knows their way around Markdown, TypeScript, React.js, and [Next.js] https://nextjs.org/). Familiarity with Tailwind-css would also be useful. - Source: dev.to / 14 days ago
  • SonicScan - A Music Fingerprinting and Identification App
    Then I learned Tauri and used my favourite frontend framework SolidJS with TailwindCSS and DaisyUI to build the UI with MotionOne to add animations and Tauri to build the desktop/web/android/ios app. - Source: dev.to / 15 days ago
  • Top 5 Free React UI Libraries to Use in 2025
    Shadcn/ui contains a set of beautifully designed and accessible components, and it works seamlessly with major React frameworks. It’s open-source and has amassed 85.5k (and counting) GitHub stars. It’s built on the shoulders of giants — Radix UI and Tailwind CSS, making it one of the best to work with. Unlike many other UI libraries, the components are not just installed as npm modules, they’re downloaded into... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Tailwind vs Linaria: Performance Investigation
    We're going to investigate the difference in performance between Tailwind and Linaria. Tailwind, you already know. And Linaria has been getting quite a lot of traction since styled components went into maintenance mode recently. We'll cover why Linaria is a good choice for this comparison a bit further. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • How to Integrate Tailwind with 11ty – With Code Examples
    It is a well-known fact that Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework. It lets you style elements directly within your HTML, thanks to pre-defined classes. Unlike other CSS frameworks that offer pre-built components, Tailwind offers these low-level utility classes that let you create your own design system. Thus, this makes crafting unique responsive designs effortless as there is not much to do with custom CSS. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Oh My Zsh and Tailwind CSS, you can also consider the following products

Prezto - Prezto is the configuration framework for Zsh; it enriches the command line interface environment...

Bootstrap - Simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and JS for popular UI components and interactions

Starship (Shell Prompt) - Starship is the minimal, blazing fast, and extremely customizable prompt for any shell! Shows the information you need, while staying sleek and minimal. Quick installation available for Bash, Fish, ZSH, Ion, and Powershell.

Bulma - Bulma is an open source CSS framework based on Flexbox and built with Sass. It's 100% responsive, fully modular, and available for free.

fish shell - The friendly interactive shell.

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces