How I Use Wezterm & Zsh For An Amazing Terminal Setup On My Mac

[@joseanmartinez]

Hey guys! Hope you enjoy the video! Remember to use whatever works best for you, be it Wezterm, Alacritty, iTerm2 or something else. This setup is very similar to my Alacritty setup and I've defaulted to it because Wezterm feels more complete in its features set (like controlling the amount of blur on a transparent window) & the configuration being written in lua. Thanks for letting me know about this awesome terminal emulator!

[@Pyankie]

Bro, the way you explain the commands is the best. One of the best things about it is that when you explain commands for your macOS setup, you don’t just focus on that; you also cover all scenarios where the command could work and explain it for other machines as well. I love how you go over that part too. I love your content. All the setups and dotfiles I'm using are yours without a single tweak. Thanks!

[@jolynele2587]

2 things: - use 'eza --icons=auto' instead of '--icons=always'. if you need to pipe the eza output the nerd icons are weird unicode which is not fun - use 'zoxide init --zsh --cmd cd' instead of aliasing z to cd

[@edumorphology]

I really like the topics you dive into. As a recreational project pursuer, I always wondered about these ninja setups I see. It's never covered, but you cover it well. Most hardcore nerds in my life have made the command line an extension of their brain, but most learning resources are preoccupied with the borderline personality disorder of JavaScript.

[@Eyad321123]

Wow i just got wezterm two days ago after getting into neovim as well, this is like perfect timing

[@jhonyortiz5]

I love wezterm. Nothing is as fast as alacrity, and sometimes even in terminals it matters. And Kitty is just a beautiful mess. Wezterm just works and is still very fast.

[@snoozehard]

Thanks so much for this! The video together with the blog post is just such a great format.

[@IncisiveCreations]

Hi Josean, as soon as I found this tutorial I followed it step-by-step and now I have the most amazing setup! I was using iTerm2 but WezTerm is another level. Looking forward to making it work with the new Mac OS Sequoia window tiling. It's a great time to be a developer :-) Thank you for taking the time to produce this tutorial - I've subscribed.

[@omnipotentpotatoes5103]

12:35 Just a little suggestion. Switching the icons flag on eza to “auto” is really helpful for piping a large directory through grep and then xargs to du or something similar. The icons a sperate text that is passed through a pipe which can really mess up the result.

[@trevortylerlee]

Great tip!

[@maddyleaf]

Been using Iterm2 for ages since I loved my setup and for some reason I could never get Alacritty or kitty to behave and look like my Iterm2 setup. I had no idea about wezterm since a week ago and everything just works perfectly, I finally got the behavior and look of my old setup, but now it's way faster.

[@joseanmartinez]

@@maddyleaf Awesome!

[@pk-mh2cx]

The content quality of your video is amazing! Nicely summarized and straight to the point. Keep it up! May I ask what tooling are you using for creating your content? Video recorder, etc The fact that we can see what you are typing is great

[@charfractal9441]

okay ,, that lua usage is a pivot point , wow, been looking for something like this for so long!!

[@nasang7478]

Yeay, been using this for 1 year, love this terminal because of the default config has both macOS and Linux keymaps interoperability for do basic things like copy, paste, etc.

[@joseanmartinez]

Nice!

[@JohnMaverick-w7c]

That thumbnail is looking 🔥

[@joseanmartinez]

@@JohnMaverick-w7c Thank you!!

[@dodochi79]

Your video is amazing. A little view from me that you should put all of you terminal's cursor at 2/3 or middle of screen > It's hard for others to follow when it at the bottom line as youtube has a control bar and sometimes audiences turn caption on.

[@dominiqueehrlich1668]

Hi Josean, your videos are hugely inspiring for me. As p10k is "end of Support" are you planning to move to oh my posh ? Would be a very interesting video how you do the migration process. Keep it up my man!

[@Keb_Le]

Now to do Kitty for the holy terminal trinity B). Great video!

[@joseanmartinez]

Thank you!

[@wojciech-kulik]

I've just switched from iTerm2 to Kitty, seems pretty solid. iTerm2 is just too overloaded with useless features, Kitty feels faster and less packed.

[@Keb_Le]

@@wojciech-kulik plus ligatures :)

[@um8078]

@@joseanmartinez hey can you a fzf setup that will also allow image preview with kitty?

[@xen2297]

What do you use for displaying keystrokes in your video?

[@marvinl7450]

Hey! Is there a particular reason why you opted for your own nvim config instead of using LazyVim, Astro, etc.?

[@omarroldan5276]

Finally the video I was waiting for!

[@thewhizhub5715]

please make a video on how to compile and run any programming language using nvim and also the required config for that ,i will be more than thankful! i have been following you lately and you are just amazing .

[@Maisonier]

Excelente vídeo! estaba buscando esto para saber más en Fedora, pero los plugins y todas las funcionalidades que agregaste son geniales! like y suscribir.

[@omarroldan5276]

Awesome video. Is there any particular reason do you prefer tmux over wezterm's related features? I think its easier to mantain only wezterm + nvim configs instead of terminal + tmux + nvim configs

[@joseanmartinez]

Thanks! So tmux is a really big part of my workflow. I like having different sessions for the different projects I’m working on so that I can jump back into them whenever I’m gonna work, even if I quit my terminal application. I have it configured in a way that that the keymaps have become second nature for me too. It also integrates well with Neovim and moving from Neovim to tmux and back. I also have the ressurect and continuous plugins so that my sessions are saved and I can restore them if I restart my computer. Hope that helps!

[@runelausen1135]

@@joseanmartinez All of this is possible with the WezTerm multiplexer 🙂. I've started using the WezTerm multiplexer myself, using basically the same keystrokes as Tmux (including Ctrl-A as the leader/prefix) and I'm a happy camper (for the exact reasons @omarroldan5276 mentions). I acknowledge 100% that Tmux works for you, so I'm not questioning your choice, but I think you missed one of the two things that sets WezTerm apart from the rest of the gang (the other one being Lua as a conf language).

[@theherk]

Yes one is kind of missing out on Wezterm if not using the mux features.

[@gxmmv]

Thank you for you work

[@gabrielgandour9271]

Hey Josean! Which keyboard are you using on this video? The sound of you typing is really satisfying to me haha.

[@joseanmartinez]

Hey! I’m using a corne v3 I built with the parts from my shop: splittype.com. With the partially assembled kit, you do need to solder the microcontrollers on. Here’s my full video on it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rKunhZeClqatjsU

[@RYKalmante]

Thank you, Josean, for adding the transparent feature. For now, I will stick with your iTerm2 setup.

[@joseanmartinez]

Of course!

[@AndreiSilvester]

I encountered bugs with clipboard in Wezterm and switched back to Konsole. Works really well (though had to patch it for OSC52 support).

[@temelgunaydin7585]

Great content and blog. Thanks

[@m.k.685]

Meslo NF does not have ligatures, does it? (Cause you mention them explicitly as advantage of wezterm)

[@raughboy188]

I am looking into weztem as my default terminal though it will be on linux but i am not sure if i am gonna install it using brew or flatpak because homebrew is avaliable for linux too.

[@bebbuinc7611]

So I decided to fire up my old MBP early 2015 and just found out Brew no doesn't support Monterey anymore... Spent 30 minutes just to install git. Use macport? Any suggestions?

[@Nirbhik-r9m]

Sir how to set coolnight theme in windows terminal

[@zachpalmer5538]

My colors are being applied but they are not showing in my zsh when opened in wezterm

[@lemuriantechpriestenginsee7590]

is wezterm any better than iterm? i configure my iterm according to your video, but i want to know if i get some advantages over one another

[@JefCollier]

I was already using this after seeing your comment about WezTerm in your Alacrity video. I still watched this to the very end because I just like listening to Josean validate me.

[@joseanmartinez]

Awesome, thank you!

[@JefCollier]

@@joseanmartinez thank YOU, brother! I started following you because I got into ricing...but then I just fell in love with your workflow and I found that it reinvigorated my love of development. Your gorgeous terminal setup in iTerm2 got me started down this path. Now it's probably time to go tweak my configs some more!

[@joseanmartinez]

@@JefCollier That means so much man. So happy to hear you’ve enjoyed configuring your workflow following along with me and its helped respark your passion for development. Its been the same for me and have loved sharing it!

[@armynyus9123]

Pro Tip: Grab an input latency analyzer first and compare wezterm with your current terminal, before you go into setting it up. Why: Wanted to love wezterm and had it nicely set up. Then I noticed lags when typing, especially with a big hdmi monitor. Could not explain, installed a latency analyzer and it confirmed. Back to alacritty now, lost quite some time in the process. Note: Wezterm is featurewise imho the best and that lag does by far not occur to everybody.

[@theherk]

I presume you’ve reported these findings to Wez? I use wezterm a lot with tons of workspaces open with the muxer and haven’t had issues for the years I’ve been using it.

[@AluisioRodriguesA]

I noticed some lag when scrolling long neovim files while using tmux where I don't have the same issue with alacritty. But I wonder if it's wezTerm that doesn't play well with tmux since it's a multiplexer on top of the other? For your test, did you set wezTerm front_end to be WebGpu (assuming you are on a mac)?

[@armynyus9123]

@@AluisioRodriguesA Back to Linux, sorry. Did try "Software" as front_end. My issues where also in neovim w/o tmux. Used "Typometer" / pavelfatin to do the tests, where wezterm was around 90ms where alacritty was at 40 with the defaults. I.e. slower but tolerable. st as well at 40, kitty at around 60 if I remember right. But the problems I had were best seen by setting to async and putting the delay to 0, with processing hickups over a second long. Not saying this is normal, seems to be my setup here, but had not time to isolate exactly. Recompiled it w/o wayland but that did not help either, though. Sadly had to leave it, will check back with my next hardware ;-)

[@abhishek_rasal]

Hey Josean, I've Applied Wizterm To Terminal, But I Wanted To Use That On MySQL. How Can I Do That? Waiting For Reply.

[@thedeemon]

Still unclear what's so good about wezterm itself. The video is mostly about zsh and tmux which one can use in any other terminal.

[@007arek]

It's similar to kitty, but with better configuration and documentation.

[@micaelviana]

The only notable difference that I use is hyperlink grammar rules. I heard that you can integrate Wezterm panels with Tmux too, similar to "vim Tmux navigator", but I don't use that

[@joseanmartinez]

For me its the easy lua configuration and some missing features in Alacritty like background blur control. Depends on what you need. The built-in tabbing, panes and multiplexing are also nice features, but I personally don’t use them.

[@JD-qo9wk]

I prefer kitty. I use Kitty + zsh + Tmux on both my work M3 mac and my home desktop Arch Linux. Works a treat.

[@inmydelorean6025]

He’s a youtuber, he needs to create more content so it’s not about what’s good or what he really uses. It’s about clicks and subscribers and covered keywords. I still find the content valuable btw. But who spends that much time because of a background blur feature, come on.

[@gokgokay]

Hi Josean! I love your configuration. I have a question, as a mac and nvim user, which of western and iterm would you prefer to use?

[@joseanmartinez]

I’m currently using Wezterm, but it’s up to you & what features you use/need.

[@gokgokay]

@@joseanmartinez thank you

[@andreadevita2085]

hello! I have a problem with emulators like Wezterm. When I try to change the size of the window, graphical glitches occur. I can't eliminate them and I can only use "clear" to hide them. Probably it is because of powerlevel10k. Do you know how to solve this?

[@bew]

You don't need to install nerd-fonts, wezterm adds those symbols automatically to the current font.

[@joseanmartinez]

Didn’t know that! I like using Meslo Nerd Font in any of my terminal setups.

[@dr.mikeybee]

I use warp terminal because it's the only terminal that has blocks. I find that I copy command response pairs a lot these days to prompt llms. Copy and pasting is a pain without blocks -- especially with long responses.

[@mmj5916]

I think the starship prompt is also a good one which works across almost all shell languages but nice setup though.

[@avramukk]

Hey! Could you share your wallpapers?

[@tizianobarilli3733]

Hi guys, how come the original Mac terminal has also changed. I thought it didn't change the original one by configuring WezTerm, any advice?

[@jlaviews]

What keyboard and switch are you using?

[@chen_tech]

You can use Control + d to exit I don't know what it is on Macos I am using Arch

[@twsau]

Taking a look at wezterm. It looks nice, but why are all of the keyboard shortcuts mangled claw ctrl+shift+alt+"" etc.

[@qiyuewuyi]

Hey guys, I try this wezterm. But I found it is easy to collapse on my windows pc. It just no response when I trying to close some tab. I don't know how to fix that. If you know it, please tell me. Thanks.

[@tomaszgora4353]

I tried to see how it compares to kitty and it is all nice and fun, but transparency is not as comprehensive as in kitty. I did not have to do anything there, and here I discovered a bunch of colors that are not translated to alpha channel. I fixed bunch of stuff in my custom nvim theme to bg="NONE" and this is fine, however other programs are tricky. fzf completions with background where other stuff if transparent drive me crazy ;) You got any solution to that?

[@rynn_3988]

Can i use it on a linux laptop with no GPU? Only integrated graphics

[@fragment7]

What’s the advantage of using wezterm over alacritty? I setup alacritty by watching your video, and now i wonder if it’s worth the switch

[@joseanmartinez]

If Alacritty has all you need there isn’t really a need to switch. I prefer it because of some additional features like controlling background blur and lua for the configuration, but it’s really up to you and what you use/need.

[@ИльяПащенко-л8х]

Thanks for the video! Kitty should be the next:) It has a nice picture preview available out of the box.

[@eyayawb]

Great video! Why do prefer to install/manage zsh plugins with brew instead of zinit?

[@joseanmartinez]

Didnt know zinit was a thing! I usually default to using homebrew for most installations. Thanks for the tip!

[@eyayawb]

@@joseanmartinez I thought I saw it in your tmux video. It was actually in Dreams of Autonomy: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q5Waiqt5aJiNadksi=FRxJqLFlXvncJBH5&t=100

[@joseanmartinez]

@@eyayawb ah nice! Thank you!

[@iamramiz]

Thock level 💯. What keyboard are you using?

[@micaelviana]

If he did not change it is MX Corne Keyboard

[@joseanmartinez]

Yep! Mx corne v3 built with parts from my shop: splittype.com

[@SuaDeDua]

Hi everyone, I want to change how my terminal looks in VS Code. How can I do it?

[@9t0wl-hk]

awesome video

[@FrancescoM-]

powerlevel10k has been discontinued same with yabai, can you make a video about oh my posh and an yabai alternative? like aerospace or similar? thanks!! great video

[@joseanmartinez]

@@FrancescoM- Hey thanks! Powelevel10k shouldn’t be breaking and the author still uses it, so I’ve decided to continue using it. Starship is a possible alternative. Definitely interested in looking into Aerospace!

[@faridlannabi]

try starship and amethyst

[@runelausen1135]

@@joseanmartinez Starship is absolutely awesome. And fast 🙂.

[@theherk]

Aerospace is absolutely incredible and is fully featured without disabling sip.

[@faridlannabi]

@@theherk thanks, i will try and compare with amethyst

[@ayoubelmhamdi7920]

I prefer not to use tmux at all on my laptop with window managers like i3 or dwm. This is because I have many open terminals in i3 workspaces, and tmux windows isn't movable between terminals, which is very inconvenient for me. I think tmux is more suited for people who use SSH or desktop window managers.

[@armynyus9123]

*this* is exactly my thinking as well. For your amusement, a chat with a colleague just this morning ;-) > Zellij seems much better 07:32 tbh: I'm using multiplexers not a lot. I would if I had a floating WM - but I'm on DWM since half a decade and all my workflow is centered around that, i.e. already a massive amount of hotkeys to throw and rearrange windows all over the place. Second layer of hotkeys then within the editor. Yet a third one in between would be too much for my old brain, don't think I miss out a lot. the most tedious part about session re-setup is to get all the edited files back - but lazyvim gives me that, and the rest, like commands are remembered in zsh and plugins like atuin. So: I use tmux only for - collab with others, during a discord call - automation of e.g. test or complex build flows., i.e. tmux send-keys + capture screen. - Or when I don't yet have a unit file for a long running process ;-) but not for workspace org. So yeah - don't ask me for tmux vs zellij, not competent on that one.

[@joseanmartinez]

My approach is typically to have only a single terminal window open and use tmux sessions/windows/panes, but using many terminal windows and a window manager instead is also a possible alternative. Many terminal windows combined with tmux would be counterintuitive. Up to you and your workflow.

[@harrynair1811]

Really confused - wezterm has a terminal multiplexer built in- why do w need a separate tmux installation ?

[@xyrn23]

hey man, I used your config on neovim I'm trying to implement the tailwindcss color highlights, I make it work but the icons on autosuggestion are gone. any idea how to fix it?

[@cloudstrife8781]

did you have any issue with your color in iterm and nvim after update?

[@tomand007]

I have

[@tusharsonker1130]

The Icons are getting showed in the Westerm app but not in there terminal app. In terminal, it is showing '?'. Why is that?

[@BattleSaberj]

Tried wezterm...but for some reason cant get ALT + ascii codes to work. Switched back to Windows Terminal

[@atetraxx]

Wezterm goated

[@jawadyaqub]

nice work!!

[@joseanmartinez]

Thank you!

[@taimaishu99]

Not sure anyone else caught it in the comments, 9:10 p10k config upwards arrow was not an upwards arrow; mines looked like that too, n for no then the next one for me was an upwards arrow

[@trypablo]

amazing content bro, must be really hot where you are

[@5thbatman]

man colorscheme is out of the world, really like it

[@JoshMedeski]

I've got a video on how I've setup background images, it's my favorite Wezterm feature!

[@joseanmartinez]

@@JoshMedeski nice!!

[@greg5929]

decent video - but very hard to read code snippets due to color schema in editor.

[@beia-rl2dw]

Can the big guy release a video on how to manage dotfiles? Because your video tutorials are the best at what they do

[@ForeverZer0]

Stash is simple and easy to manage if you have some rudimentary familiarity with git and symlinks. None of the solutions are perfect, and are dependent on one's needs/opinions, there is no real "general consensus" on what is best like there often is with other software. Before stash I just used a bare git repository, which is another popular solution.

[@Xaito]

IIRC installing a nerd font is a good idea, but optional with Wezterm since it comes with default support for the icons. I might be mistaken, it's been a while since I last used wezterm.

[@RazoBeckett.]

Alacritty Chads

[@cariyaputta]

Wezterm config is even more simpler than Windows Terminal's.

[@onat_mys]

icons appear as crosses how do I solve this problem?

[@person9627]

install nerd font and make sure you type the name right in config

[@TheXtremerEditor]

😎Nice

[@JoeBrigAI]

Need a video on the features before showing how to configure.

[@Naz-h8z]

Anyone know good browser terminal

[@diegoulloao]

I've tried all of them, I think Kitty is much faster than Wezterm

[@DoraMeroy-h5p]

Corwin Motorway

[@danwroy]

_:Lazy U_ please

[@HiHaveYourMetTed]

I can't for the LIFE of me figure out how to get the CMD-K key binding to clear screen (the way CTRL-L does), Anyone up to the challenge? verified with your own eyes... 'cuz the code that's "supposed" to work, hasn't

[@xvzf115]

Based

[@zombizombi]

Why are we using an actual programming language to configure a terminal emulator.. sigh

[@Codegix]

im a lua language hater. lua programming language has so many bugs that has not been fixed for many years.

[@TheOnlyEpsilonAlpha]

Okay, i'm at 5:05 and honestly: I'm about to skip that video. First of all: That thing looks way too complicated to configure. You needed, cutted together, around 11 chapter to config that thing Second: You mentioning things where you need to know other things like at 4:56 " ...similar to what happens when you make configuration change in a laity" i needed to turn on subtitles because i didn't know what you meant with that and even with subtitles on i don't know either. Whatever the subtitles mean with "a laity" Sry, but i can't learn something from that video

[@erlangparasu6339]

kitty terminal emulator

[@mal-avcisi9783]

Wez term is really bad

[@xen2297]

You really need to check out Warp Terminal…

[@theherk]

Closed source and registration required to use a terminal.

[@joseanmartinez]

Yeah that’s why I haven’t tried it out, something like Wezterm works great for what I need. Might give Warp a spin sometime in the future, but am pretty happy with my setup.

[@xen2297]

Each to their own. Closed sauce is really not a reason to not use software in 2024. Plenty of the world’s best software is closed sauce. Anyway, I don’t remember having to register to use it, but it’s still way better than anything else I’ve used.

[@theherk]

@@xen2297 closed source is and will continue to be a good reason not to use software when good alternatives exist. It is safer, usually more secure, and generally more ethical.

[@nsuid7499]

Warp consumes memory like Chrome. I once checked my activity monitor and found Warp was using around 3Gb memory and I only had 3 tabs opened with nothing fancy in it. Been using Alacritty after that

[@SjarMenace]

Zsh js not the default shell… you know that you just wanted people comment about it

[@joseanmartinez]

@@SjarMenace it is on macOs

[@SjarMenace]

@@joseanmartinez bruh bash shell is the default shell when have a clean install of macos

[@Ammar_Aldawood]

@@SjarMenace No. Apple switched to Zsh from Bash as the default shell with the macOS Catalina release.

[@SjarMenace]

@@Ammar_Aldawood youre so funny

[@SjarMenace]

I dont see any theming on macos

[@moomincare]

Great video!

[@joseanmartinez]

Thanks!

[@adriansrfr]

Great content!

[@joseanmartinez]

Thanks!