wait

Summary

wait'' defers plugin loading until after the shell prompt is first displayed, enabling turbo mode. It is the primary mechanism for achieving fast shell startup with Zinit.

Syntax / Usage

zi wait'' light zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting

# Wait N seconds (float) after prompt
zi wait'1' light some/plugin

# Wait for a condition: zsh event or arbitrary expression
zi wait'[[ -n $TMUX ]]' light some/plugin

Details

When wait'' is set, the plugin is loaded asynchronously after the first prompt is rendered. The empty string wait'' is equivalent to wait'0' — zero-second defer, meaning “as soon as the prompt is shown.”

The value can be:

An integer or float: seconds to wait after the prompt
A zsh conditional expression in [[...]]: loading is deferred until the expression is true, checked on each precmd hook
An event name prefixed with !: loading triggers on that zsh event

Order of loading among wait'' plugins is determined by the order they appear in the config and by their wait value.

wait'' is the defining feature of turbo mode. Without it, all plugins load synchronously before the first prompt.

Examples

# Typical turbo block: defer syntax highlighting and autosuggestions
zi wait'' lucid light zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting
zi wait'' lucid light zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions

# Load only inside tmux sessions
zi wait'[[ -n $TMUX ]]' lucid light tmux/plugin

Caveats / Common Mistakes

Plugins that set key bindings (e.g. fzf tab completion) must have their bindings re-applied after loading; use the atload'' ice for this.
Completions added by a wait''-deferred snippet may not be available until the next prompt cycle; pair with lucid to suppress the loading message.
Avoid wait'' on plugins that define functions needed during .zshrc evaluation (e.g. theme loading). Those should load synchronously.