zsh-cpmv-progress

Native terminal progress bars for cp/mv using the OSC 9;4 escape sequence - the same mechanism used by Claude Code, uv, and other modern CLI tools.

Supported by iTerm2 (3.6.6+), Windows Terminal, Ghostty, and WezTerm. On unsupported terminals the sequences are simply ignored.

Why

cp and mv don't show progress on their own. This plugin adds two new commands, cpp and mvp, that show a real progress bar rendered natively by your terminal (not ASCII art in stdout), visible even if you switch tabs.

• cpp: copy via rsync, always shows a progress bar.
• mvp: moves files. If source and destination are on the same volume, it falls back to an instant mv (no bar needed since it's already instant via rename()). If they're on different volumes/disks, it uses rsync --remove-source-files with a live progress bar.

cp/mv are left completely untouched. cpp/mvp are additive.

Requirements

• zsh
• rsync (pre-installed on macOS and most Linux distros)
• awk (pre-installed everywhere)
• A terminal that supports OSC 9;4 for the actual bar to render (otherwise the commands still works, just pointlessly without the visual bar)

Installation

Quick install (recommended)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jk779/zsh-cpmv-progress/main/setup.sh | bash

This clones the repo to ~/.zsh/plugins/zsh-cpmv-progress and adds a source line to your .zshrc. Safe to re-run anytime — it'll just git pull and won't duplicate the source line.

To re-run for updates later, just run the same command again. If the update fails due to local changes (e.g. you edited the plugin file by hand), force a hard reset to the latest version: ...main/setup.sh | FORCE=1 bash

As always with curl | bash: inspect the script first before piping it to bash.

Manual

git clone https://github.com/jk779/zsh-cpmv-progress.git ~/.zsh/plugins/zsh-cpmv-progress
echo 'source ~/.zsh/plugins/zsh-cpmv-progress/zsh-cpmv-progress.plugin.zsh' >> ~/.zshrc

oh-my-zsh

git clone https://github.com/jk779/zsh-cpmv-progress.git ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/plugins/zsh-cpmv-progress

Then add zsh-cpmv-progress to the plugins=(...) array in your .zshrc.

zinit

zinit load jk779/zsh-cpmv-progress

Usage

cpp large_file.iso /Volumes/Backup/
cpp -r some_folder/ /Volumes/Backup/

mvp some_folder/ ./elsewhere/        # same volume -> instant mv, no bar
mvp some_folder/ /Volumes/OtherDisk/ # cross-volume -> rsync + progress bar

Configuration

Variable	Effect
CPMV_PROGRESS_DISABLE=1	Disables the whole plugin (no functions, no hook)
CPMV_PROGRESS_NO_HINT=1	Disables the reminder hint on plain cp/mv calls

Set these before the plugin is sourced, e.g. at the top of your .zshrc.

Known caveats

• cpp/mvp use rsync under the hood. For very large file trees on the same machine/volume, cpp is a touch slower than a raw filesystem cp since it goes through rsync's file-by-file comparison logic.
• These are shell functions, only active in interactive zsh sessions that load this plugin. Scripts, other shells, or subprocesses calling mv/cp directly are unaffected (by design — your real cp/mv binaries are never touched).

License

MIT