Make your WSL or WSL2 terminal awesome - with Windows Terminal, zsh, oh-my-zsh and Powerlevel10k

[@christianlempa]

I updated some stuff in my Windows Development Setup with WSL2, ZSH and some new color schemes + VSCode Setup: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pXeZmH-vnbZ3mtk

[@RaFaeLSanTaNaperfil]

Hi I'm from Brazil. By far, it has the best content I've ever found, thanks and congratulation!

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much! ❤️

[@SSSNIPD]

This is the best WSL2 setup I have seen. Subscribed for the quality content. Keep it up!

[@christianlempa]

Thank you ☺️

[@thonglevan4950]

Grateful for your well-detailed instruction. It is appropriate for beginners like me.

[@VidarrKerr]

This is awesome, thank you for editing in the files!

[@joshualloyd6694]

Im glad i came across your video and really wanted to thank you. I hope your chanel really blows up,

[@christianlempa]

thank you so much! :)

[@RomanPerepelitsa]

Great video! When `p10k configure` asks whether all icons fit between the crosses, you need to answer truthfully. In the video you said you can answer Yes or No and it won't make a difference. It will make a difference and it's fortunate that you've truthfully answered No (the icons didn't actually fit between the crosses). You can try running `p10k configure` again and seeing what happens if you answer Yes. This will tell the wizard that your terminal font is monospace when in fact it isn't. Powerlevel10k will generate prompt for a monospace font and you'll see weird artifacts. If you make the same choices as in the video, you'll see that slanted separators are broken and that some icons overlap or get truncated. It's the same with other questions that the wizard asks. Just answer truthfully. If you have to answer No to some question, it doesn't mean that something is broken. As long as you don't mislead Powerlevel10k, it'll give you functional prompt regardless of the font you are using. I also encourage you to give two-line prompt a try. It gives you more room for typing commands and all commands start from the same offset. It works really well when combined with Transient Prompt. If you use vi keymap, I recommend choosing prompt without left frame so that you get `prompt_char` on the second line on the left (it's shown as a green `❯` in the wizard). This symbol changes its shape depending on the current vi mode (insert, command, visual, etc.) and turns red on error.

[@christianlempa]

Thank's for letting me know. It's somehow weird and seems to be depended on the font you're using. You can even see it on Word or OneNote, too. The icons overlap with the rest of the text. However, I've seen that some Nerd Fonts will fit between the crosses but most of them don't. Although, I didn't recognized a difference, I believe you're right. Good suggestion with the two-lines, I'll try it out 😊

[@RomanPerepelitsa]

​@@christianlempa There are two variants of every font in the Nerd Fonts repository: one with "Mono" in its name, and one without. The font you've got is without "Mono". In this context mono means that all glyphs in the font fit within their designated boxes. Fonts without mono have glyphs that overflow to the next box. If you tell Powerlevel10k that your font is not mono, it'll insert extra spaces in a few places to give large icons more room and to avoid overlap. The downside of mono fonts is that icons in them are rather small. However, if you would install the recommended font from Powerlevel10k, you would find that it's mono (icons do fit between the crosses) and icons are fairly large (they are 44% larger than in mono variants of Nerd Fonts). That font also looks good, like most things made by Apple.

[@christianlempa]

Thank's for the detailed explanation, I've done some tests and confirmed what you're suggesting! Powerlevel10k is the best zsh theme I've seen so far, incredible job

[@leonardoandrade9116]

Thank you for this video man!! Excellent explanation and the customization was beautiful!! Greetings from Brazil!

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much! Greetings from Germany

[@r0bby99]

Thanks for sharing some tips on how to leverage plugins (and custom ones) in Oh My Zsh, Christian!

[@AlanVideosHD]

¡MASTERPIECE! 🏆

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much 😍

[@PlayRiteProductions]

Been looking for a video like this for a long time. Thanks so much!

[@christianlempa]

Thanks man, I'm glad you liked it!

[@daniloespinozapino8848]

this is so good, my terminal looks so neat now and the autocomplete **kisses his hand like an italian**

[@DrEverythingBAlright]

This video is just what I wanted-excellent!

[@christianlempa]

Glad you liked it 🙂

[@SN_9813]

I'm just disappointed that I can't like this video more than once. For almost 3 days now, I have been looking for a way to turn the Windows terminal into something I wanted it to be, but I was not successful until I finally found this video. Thank you so much for this great video

[@christianlempa]

That's a good reason to be disappointed 🤣 thank you so much!

[@9eyes423]

Excellent tutorial! It really motivated me to make wsl tylish. Thanks.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you! :)

[@allanpgf]

Awesome video! I followed the steps and everything is working fine and now I have a great linux bash on windows 10 #mindblowing

[@CrazyFanaticMan]

Fantastic Turorial, well done!

[@christianlempa]

Many thanks!

[@GorkemYildirim]

An interesting shell and a comprehensive guide.

[@vinothkumars7421]

Thanks mate. I was not able to display the icons in my terminal and now i can only because of you. Thanks a bunch.

[@vinothkumars7421]

how can i get this terminal under vscode?

[@christianlempa]

You need to install the WSL2 extension and connect to the remote machine, and set the terminal executable in vscode to /bin/zsh :)

[@vinothkumars7421]

@@christianlempa I had that already around 6 months back but not able to display the icons and fonts properly. Now I changed the font family to Nerd font and can able to get the terminal like you inside vscode Thanks again

[@cyberguide_in]

Really well explained! Appreciate it!

[@christianlempa]

Thanks man! :)

[@gifaralanshar3311]

Love your tutorial sir!

[@christianlempa]

Thx! :)

[@Muhammed-zn7ft]

This is the best tutorial in this site. I watched it 3 times whenever I reinstall my dev env. I suggesting this to all my friends. Awesome :)

[@kulcsarrudolf17]

Thank you for this amazing video!

[@christianlempa]

Np 😀

[@JeanFrancoCaringi]

Terrific job! Thanks!

[@dedpossum66]

Thank you for another useful video! I happened to find another one of your videos while trying to figure out what to do exactly about fonts :) For anybody doing this in 2021, there are now settings in wt. Also, I believe you can just 'source .zshrc' instead of reopening the terminal ( @9:29 ).

[@christianlempa]

Thanks mate! :)

[@hackyfunky2875]

how to do that ?

[@henniej.a.blanke6377]

Hi Christian, nice tutorial. Just one thing I ran into: I don't if it's mentioned anywhere before, but I couldn't get WSL running at first, because in my BIOS Windows Virtualization was disabled. After enabling it, all worked fine. Also, Windows Terminal relies on the service "Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service"running. Make sure to check this as well.

[@kemaldursun8192]

you are doing great bro

[@christianlempa]

thx! ;)

[@starash6770]

10:15 - Thats why I was thinking "Why am not getting icons", really thanks to youtube to show this video after 2 days 🙂

[@christianlempa]

Glad to hear the video was helpful :)

[@truongngo6746]

Many thanks for your presentation!

[@christianlempa]

Thank you :)

[@mason8714]

Very good video. I always wanted to change the look of bash. - highly recommend people following the video to make your terminal look as good as Christians.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you buddy!

[@dmbacon86]

Fantastic tutorial, thank you!

[@christianlempa]

Glad you liked it 😁

[@cuberos7430]

I novice with wsl ubuntu shells but you explained look very easy .Thanks a lot !

[@christianlempa]

You're welcome!

[@nrohankar]

Nice one. Really helpful!

[@christianlempa]

Glad it was helpful!

[@nrohankar]

@@christianlempa Hi, the updated themes are awesome. Thank you for sharing.

[@christianlempa]

Thanks mate 😁

[@alexlerner8327]

perfect. thank you, dude. appreciate it.

[@98toxic1]

Amazing tutorial! thank you for your help.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you bro 😁

[@kamoteflavor]

Nice! Learn something new, THANKS!!!

[@christianlempa]

You're welcome

[@walteralvarado9078]

HI FROM PERÚ, IT'S SO AMAZING!!!!!!!

[@christianlempa]

Thanks bro! :)

[@nuttchokwittaya8225]

I can't find the theme schema anymore, please advise.

[@hossainmahmoodtuhin8069]

Really helpful. Thanks!

[@christianlempa]

Glad you liked it! :)

[@jackfrankmurphy]

Thank you 🙏 Great video

[@christianlempa]

Thanks mate :)

[@bobdpa]

Great video. Thanks!

[@christianlempa]

Thanks man!

[@12qwasyxcv12]

Great Tutorial👍

[@christianlempa]

Thanks

[@camjthompson12]

Great video! Big help. The only thing I found weird about my pk10 configure set up was that I never got the following screen choices: prompt separators (12:23 in video), prompt head (12:28 in video), prompt tails (12:30 in video), or the icons (12:47 in the video). A big reason I attempted to do this was the option to see those many icons. Has anyone had similar issues?

[@jerryyu9367]

awesome video!!

[@christianlempa]

Thanks!

[@jeffersonsousa5354]

The best tutorial!

[@myself0883]

great video , thanks for sharing.

[@christianlempa]

Thanks :)

[@chronosxtx]

Hey, I'm having a problem with the fonts not working. It says they're not valid, I've tried everything.

[@ianhoskings1199]

Brilliant tutorial. Amazes me how people can vote it down. Great work.

[@christianlempa]

Haha thank's bro. Yea some people just don't like bald guys 😂

[@Terzaghi12]

thanks, now Windows Terminal looks decent

[@danielparedes172]

awesome!! thanks 👍

[@lukadjokovitch7040]

Nice video, thank you.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you too :)

[@linocesar6328]

thanks for the tutorial, Regards!!

[@christianlempa]

Glad you liked it!

[@brittca]

Hey, at 9:24 you say "lets write this file", how did you do that??? I'M a new Linux user and I'm completely stuck on the part where I add the theme to ZSH .zshrc file... how do I save my changes. I've closed the terminal window multiple times, and terminal just tells me this... and it's not saving the new theme. Swap file "~/.zshrc.swp" already exists! [O]pen Read-Only, (E)dit anyway, (R)ecover, (D)elete it, (Q)uit, (A)bort: Please help! thank you.

[@jabranejabri3346]

nice and great video , thank you very much

[@christianlempa]

Thank you too

[@murtazavohra360]

this is cool! Thanks

[@naveedzahoor1796]

For the people who are directly installing it via WSL shell, right click on font file to install it and later on you can select font from properties.

[@cuberos7430]

Hello man, I installed on windows terminal right ok but wsl dont have icons glygs .You can take more details about this Thanks 🤔

[@cheesyfreak227]

Thank you for showing this!! Love it! Thanks Mate! I have just one question: Are you from Germany? :D

[@christianlempa]

Thanks, glad you liked it, and yea I'm from Germany 😁

[@cheesyfreak227]

@@christianlempa Das dachte ich du hast so einen Akzent 😁

[@tobechukwublessed4274]

Wow...this is great

[@totally_not_a_troll]

I've did a very similar customization. Outside of the color scheme basically, but following different tutorial. For reasons unknown, for me, when entering any git repo of any sorts, ZHS simply became unbearably slow. But here I can see it working exactly as expected. I cannot fathom what I could have done to make it be so slow. I mean, a simple ls would take a good 5s for a response. Any known issues? Fixes? After some minor googling, I've seen several people complaining, but admitedly way too few for it to be a major issue 🤔 EDIT: Did a complete uninstall of oh-my-zhs and zhs itself. Reinstalled exactly according to your video, and git repos are still very slow.

[@SyLLar12]

Your Windows desktop look great. How to make similar look ? Especially bar on top ?

[@christianlempa]

Thanks! :) The bar on the top is from Rainmeter which is similar to conky that exists for Linux. I probably will upload it on my dotfiles and make a short video about it.

[@sayedmahmoud266]

@@christianlempa waiting for this video

[@TChrisBaker]

@@christianlempa Thanks for mentioning Rainmeter. I got it working last night with your bar. It's so cool :)

[@buckleyYOU]

I was waiting for this. I've been using cmder on windows a long time but was always impressed with (oh-my-)zsh. Your walkthrough is amazing. Some little feedback on vim. People warned me about it and I think it justified as I got stuck the first 5 seconds :) Some notes so you can edit the file $ vim ~/.zshrc make the change press ESC press colon ":" type x and enter Thank you! Mabye a video or blog post on vim is a good idea?

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much for the kind words :) And also thanks for the good suggestion about vim. I'm not quite sure how I should do this, because I'm not a vim expert and I usually don't make any modifications to it as other people do. Maybe it would be a good tutorial about the very beginner basics about vim, without any plugins or extensions. So I put that on my backlog *g*

[@lokesh3709]

Hey what was the thing on the top of your main OS? Like it had a start button, the process monitoring tools and stuff? How to get that, post a video on that or tell me the tool please!~

[@christianlempa]

This is rainmeter! You can find my theme and settings on my github repo: dotfiles ;)

[@ismailhannover]

flashig, danke man!

[@christianlempa]

Kein Ding 😊

[@where9810]

thank you my guy!

[@christianlempa]

thanks bro :)

[@mrmuranga]

Awesome article.Thanks Ran into problems trying to run some programs that i would previously launch automatically from bash...e.g jupyter notebook ....to fix this from the zsh new prompt type PATH=$PATH:~/.local/bin/ Something else....before playing and making any changes on your windows terminal settings.json....please copy and paste them maybe on a notepad. This way if it doesn't work after making changes you can revert to previous working settings.json

[@siscka1656]

Well done, ty.

[@soulninjadev]

wow can u make a video on how to customize the windows desktop to look like urs

[@christianlempa]

Yea that's a good idea, I'll do that in the future :)

[@soulninjadev]

@@christianlempa thank u 👍

[@mister-ace]

hey, how can I change my os_icon (ubuntu icon)?? I have already tried many settings but without success

[@rock_0075]

thanks for the video, is there a way to open WSL2 ubunutu the same directory when opening from the directory? it works for cmd but not for ubuntu any thoughts

[@cherifaly6757]

Great tutorial 🙂 One quick question please.. What's the command line to display all themes? Like for example in powershell command-line is Get-poshthemes, what about WSL ?

[@Tiaguex]

Awesome video my friend. My wsl looks awesome. Can you please!!! Please, tell us how to make mongodb work in wsl2?? Can't make it work no matter what I do...

[@francootaola9172]

Hello, I have an issue with this, when I right click in a folder and choose open terminal here my Ubuntu 22.04 opens in the root folder instead of the current folder. By any chance do you know how to solve this problem ?

[@jeancolombel4618]

Awesome !

[@christianlempa]

Thanks!

[@Akwjbwbqm]

did anyone here manage to find the settings he made available on Windows Scheme? i looked on his github but it's no longer there. Minute 15:00

[@christianlempa]

It’s now in a different repo dotfiles-win

[@gauravsrivastava17]

Everything worked expect colour scheme I don't know why but other things seems good

[@christianlempa]

Hmm no idea, maybe check out our Discord and share some details. People might be able to help you

[@MdShamimRahman]

Haven't found some windows super hacks in a while, I was dual booting only for bash/zsh, it's over I guess. Thank you

[@CookieMonsteeerrr]

How to keep history of opened tabs on next terminal run? Moreover is it possible being on same tab to split diffrent terminals and not only one type?

[@christianlempa]

I'm using history files in zsh, which helps me. You can also configure Windows Terminal to open the same tabs on the next start up

[@CookieMonsteeerrr]

@@christianlempa how to tell wt to remember the tabs?

[@matteopiccioni196]

that is awesome. But I found a bug, if you're using "terminal app" in Windows 11 (is the default terminal) there are some additional problems with the font, tough you install the font shown in the video or the Anonymice and you properly change the .JSON configuration file of the terminal, each time you will boot your machine the terminal won't recognise the font you specified in the "faceFont" section therefore you have to install every time the font itself is annoying but works.. changing shell and customize it is not a very good choice on wsl

[@pastorcortesosorno2382]

I followed the instructions, I installed the fonts but I don't see the glyphs (like for example when being inside a folder which is a GIT repo) in my terminal, why is that?

[@christianlempa]

That can happen with some specific fonts, try another one.

[@einadroj01]

Great video my guy, learned a lot and was smooth to follow through. My windows terminal is working according to this guide but not for the Ubuntu App itself. The icons, color and font theme are not the same as the Windows Terminal. I'm thinking I should be installing the font in the Ubuntu App itself but I can't find a guide for it. Can you advise? Thanks!

[@christianlempa]

Thanks man 😊, well that's unfortunatly a limitation by the Ubuntu app itself, therefore I don't use it instead windows terminal

[@einadroj01]

@@christianlempa welp, I'm happy with the way my terminal is working already, thanks to you! Much appreciated!! 🙏🏼

[@shruh493]

Thank you so much

[@christianlempa]

You're most welcome

[@yagnasivasai]

Thank you very much..

[@tridibbiswas3361]

Hi, Thank you for the video. Have installed using Ubuntu on WSL2 on Windows Terminal with zsh using your instruction. But I find that there is gap on the right hand side, bottom of the screen and the zsh screen does not cover the entire terminal window edge to edge. How could we fix this. Is there something I am missing

[@christianlempa]

Maybe this is the padding of windows terminal. On my github config file I've set this to 0 I believe.

[@tridibbiswas3361]

@@christianlempa Thank you for your reply. Have tried there seems to no change

[@s_e_s_h981]

is it Possible to change the terminals Cursor??? can i get code for it!

[@hawolex2341]

can`t fint the rigth color sheme you use in you git now only the standard one. did you overwrite the colour shemes?

[@christianlempa]

I did some changes lately, I replaced the old colorscheme I was using in this video, so you might find only find the newer ones in my dotfiles.

[@fxmdr82]

Great!!!

[@christianlempa]

Thx

[@ronemchowry180]

how to install nerd fornt theme for vs code terminal

[@abhijitsathe468]

Do I have to install WSL2 in order to get oh my zsh? Or can I just install and customize on windows directly

[@christianlempa]

Zsh only works on unix based systems as far as I know. So you need WSL2 for it. By the way, I recently made an updated video on my Terminal Prompt that's also working in PowerShell: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d3yVe3hojth-qtE

[@davidkanai6944]

fantastic

[@christianlempa]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@AbuAhmedAlsudani]

It is an amazing tutorial. can I access mnt directory from windows? Thanks in advance.

[@christianlempa]

Thanks! yea you can open the path \\wsl$ and then go to the wsl root directory 😊

[@AbuAhmedAlsudani]

​@@christianlempa Thanks a lot😊😊

[@hackyfunky2875]

i cannot open setting in word as json file ? i cannot even see any such option while clicking on setting ?

[@PiyushBhakat]

On the left bottom corner you can see the option as "Open JSON File"

[@cipriancimpan5538]

I recently switched from Mac to Windows and I really *love* what they've done with the Windows Terminal. I was afraid that I'll miss iterm, but this works great. Anyone knows if it's possible to make the command bar always stick to the bottom? Thanks!

[@shambhaviaggarwal9977]

Most of the icons were question marks so now my terminal does not have icons at all. what should I do?

[@christianlempa]

I would check if you're using the right font in windows terminal. Check all the steps provided in this video, hope this helps

[@olegtishkin7579]

How I can restore dafault wsl2 terminal after testing zsh? Thanks

[@christianlempa]

You can change the default terminal to /bin/bash in the /etc/passwd file when you edit your current user.

[@AdityaKumar-gl1to]

how did you write the file using command :w I am not able to write that command in terminal

[@christianlempa]

You need to exit the insert mode with ESC first ;)

[@TwstedTV]

Do you have a Windows PowerShell version. for those who dont have or don't want WSL installed... thanks :)

[@christianlempa]

Not yet, I know there are similar themes existing for powershell, but since I rarely use it, I haven't covered it, yet.

[@ulveskvlt6546]

So I used Nano to edit the file bit I think I did it wrong. Reinstalling Ubuntu to try it again...

[@hagiangtruong4173]

When I use sudo su, then all my customize is gone. How to apply these changes as a root?

[@christianlempa]

That's because you're switching to another user. You would need to do the same you did for your user on the root users account as well.

[@Ulyssesgc]

hi, thanks for the video but i have a problem. I'm getting this error after restart the ubuntu terminal" no such file or directory: /home//.oh-my-zsh/themes/powerlevel10k/powelevel10k.zsh-theme" looks like the terminal is not in the home directory because the command line name is wich is my windows root i guess, any idea what is causing this? thanks

[@christianlempa]

Hey thanks man! Hm I'm not sure, can you share some details on our discord? Maybe we can help you :)

[@3ckortreat]

how to do terminal transparent? i followed your way but nothing changed

[@christianlempa]

If you've set up everything correct in the configuration file you likely turned off the transparency effects in Windows 10? Since Windows Terminal uses the "acrylic" effect in Windows 10 check in "Settings" -> "Personalization" -> "Transparency Effects". However, some people have reported they're having issues, so in this case we probably need to wait until Windows Terminal supports a native transparency effect than the acrylic function in Windows 10.