so recently since I've been switching around from terminal to terminal I've been wondering what is actually the best terminal out there like objectively the terminal emulator that beats all the other terminal emulators what is the best one and I tried to find that out but the thing is I don't have the time to actually install and rate every single terminal emulator out there by myself so I Enlisted the help with all of my friends that's right chat is going to help me rate all the best terminal emulators I'm excited about this let's go [Music] so here's how this is going to work I have my best friends right here with me right now these are all my best friends they're the only people I know in the whole entire world and I have a list of terminal emulators these terminal emulators are the most popular terminal emulators out there on the market right now I'm going to recruit my friends to help me rate the terminals so that we can get a good view of what the best terminals are once and for all and at the end of the day we might have a winner so let's see what happens okay so here's the criteria what we're going to do is we're going to look at the GitHub page of every single terminal that we come across in our tier list then we're going to go over some of the features of this terminal if I have it installed in my system I'll show it off a little bit and then at the end of it we're going to ask chat what they think the terminal rates in a tier from s to f f being the worst s being the best s being the S tier Godly terminal F being I wouldn't use it ever okay so first terminal up there is a bit of a problem here one thing that I've noticed and this is going to subtract some points from a lot of these terminals a lot of them have the same exact icon and we're seeing this immediately right here these first four terminals I've gone over them a couple of times and I've already forgotten what they are so what we're going to do is we're going to reference them I have yazzi open right here so I will reference all these terminals by the way this is ghosty my personal favorite but I'm biased we're not don't worry about it don't worry about it we're going to reference our terminals based on the images I see in yai so that we can just do a little quick reference check make sure we're looking at the right thing here so now first terminal up let's check it out I already forgot what it is I think I just found it oh here it is this is gnome terminal fellas all right number one here's what we got here this is gnome terminal this is our first terminal that we're going to rate and let's just see what we have here we're going to go over a few of the features and then we're going to talk to chat and see what they think okay is this an S tier terminal or is it an F tier is it a winner or a loser is it a hero or a zero now gome terminal I know for a fact comes built into auntu and it comes with uh The Gnome desktop environment so it's something that a lot of people have used so there's a lot of support for it and a lot of plugins and a lot of things that people have developed for Gnome terminal over time all right let's look at the Wikipedia page apparently Wikipedia has the best information on gnome terminal I don't know why but I don't know let's check it out so gnome terminal emulates the x-term terminal emulator and provides some of the same features as x-term terminal emulator provides okay great so what does it provide okay so it provides profile files it has compatibility so it supports a couple of different compatibility options for interfacing with older software okay it has colored text that's a big one colored text is a big one to have and it has the ability to change backgrounds okay so as far as I understand gnome terminal has some pretty good features but nothing that like Wows you nothing that really jumps out that's kind of how I feel about gnome terminal it's just kind of there and you can use it if you want but it's not anything crazy what do we think what does chat think about gome terminal what do we got here I'm seeing a d s tier we got double D's okay that's two D's maybe that means a c i see a couple of C's a bunch of D's oh man people are hating on gnome terminal I didn't realize this it's a great terminal to install other terminals C tier okay I'm seeing a lot of D's and a lot of C's there are much more D's in here than C's so I'm going to go with d for Gnome terminal I have to say I agree with Chad on this one because I've used it but nothing really Wows me about gnome terminal the next one we are reviewing is terminal app on Mac OS this is the def default terminal on Mac OS the default terminal on Mac OS is so boring that I don't really see any documentation for it out of the box so I guess we're going to go to Wikipedia again it's a terminal emulator it's included in Mac OS ooh terminal originated in next step and open step interesting the predecessor operating systems of Mac OS once again I got to say there's not a whole lot going on here it's it's just built into Mac OS what does chat think about terminal app for Mac I'm seeing a lot of FS oh a solid C oh a z f plus for the History part I agree the F actually gives you something there FF s tier excuse me lag scarpy you're lying I know you are and a z you voted twice you're baned D it's not awesome but there's nothing inherently bad about it I kind of agree I'm going to go with F I think that the terminal built into Mac OS Is Not Great the only thing I've done with the terminal app is download home brew and then install iterm 2 that's all I've done I've never used it otherwise it's a boring terminal and I know what to tell you it just is it's there's nothing there to it I need something with a little Pizzazz right and I think Chad agrees so Mac OS terminal not great F okay now let's move on to the next one once again we're going to have to reference our icons because they are all the same I think that should remove some points okay we're talking about xfce4 term xfce4 term is the terminal that we are looking at now so let's check out some documentation for xfce4 terminal xfce terminal is a lightweight and easy to use terminal emulator application with many advanced features including drop- Down tabs unlimited scrolling full colors fonts transparent backgrounds and more interesting okay so I think this is a good terminal I haven't really used it before because I'm not really an xfce person I myself am more of a gnome person I always install Linux starting with the gnome desktop environment and then move on from there so I've never really had experience with xfc E4 so let's see what chat thinks unlimited scrolling doesn't work on whand natively so F interesting huh okay we got C C's and D's I'm seeing a lot of C's a lot of D's I'd say it's C just because it's not gnome or KDE Okay cool so a lot of C's we seem to have some consensus in chat for first that's interesting okay so xfce4 term that's a c terminal it's not going to wow you it works but once again yeah yeah okay moving on to the next one yet again we are going to have to reference our sheet of terminals here what do we got which one is this oh St okay St is a terminal I literally know nothing about so this is going to be interesting there's probably two people in this chat who have actually ever used St what are some features that St terminal has I'll just go with the AI generated article from Google search how about that the suckless terminal or St is a minimal terminal emulator for the X environment okay so it's not going to work in Wayland for me because I'm using hyperland by the way and it has many features including graphical terminal editing previous text keyboard and mouse shortcuts utf8 and wide character support 256 colors and True Colors anti-alias fonts fallback fonts line drawing etc etc ooh line drawing what the what do we think chat to configure St you have to apply patches to its source code and recompile it yeah if I mean if that's true FFF I'm seeing a lot of FS here oh people say ew yeah okay all right that's enough F so it seems like St terminal wasn't a good choice for this list most people don't seem to like it we're going to give it an f and again don't be mad at me we're crowdsourcing this so this isn't just my opinions my opinions will have a little bit of a sway in here but for the most part I'm going with my best friends who is of course chat on YouTube and twitch next up we have warp terminal now War warp terminal is actually in Linux now and that's pretty cool and I actually really like warp Terminal A lot now people might not believe this because I am an fzf and Unix tooling stand but I really like warp terminal they do have some stuff where you sign in and there's some Telemetry things going on but if you're already using GitHub co-pilot and other things I don't see how that's a problem but warp terminal as it's showing right here on this like sort of uh marketing page is actually really powerful and I like it a lot it has essentially chat gbt built into it but it also has really really great tooling around things like recursively searching your history using fuzzy finding you don't actually have to install fzf to have actual fzf like recursive searching of your history that's huge also if you forget certain commands like for me kubernetes I always forget kuber NES commands warp was always great in sort of autoc completing those things using uh sort of AI suggestions kind of like co-pilot and I don't know I always liked warp so I have nothing wrong with warp I'll give it an a for sure because I think it's a great terminal I think it's really well designed and well made I think it has great tooling out of the box but the thing that keeps it from an S tier is I think it has some t-u problems warp tries to do too much I mean that's an okay assessment call me Mr yogurt hi [Music] handsome who gave it an F it is not an F I disagree with the F statement all right I'm seeing a few A's and a few B's and you know what since this is ultimately my tier list you guys are helping my best friends are helping but this is my tier list uh I'm going to give warp an a I think it's a great terminal I think they're a great company they're making some cool stuff here's something else that I think people are forgetting here warp also sponsors almost every open source GitHub repository that I come across when I'm doing research for things that are open- Source on Linux I see a warp sponsorship logo on a lot of them there are a ton of Open Source projects that warp is sponsoring so they're doing good by supporting creators in the open source software community and I think that's pretty good and here's an example of that everyone's favorite tool fzf which is actually something that warp has out of the box I'm not sure if they use fzf under the hood but they have fuzzy finding for your recursive history warp sponsors this okay so they are helping the open source Community by sponsoring a lot of these projects so in that sense I say good on warp and for anyone else who's saying it's a B I disagree I think it's an a terminal might not work with my workflow perfectly but I think they're doing good stuff okay so so far this list has been a doozy we have a lot of crappy terminals that we've been going through here lately warp is a lone star in this list so far let's see what we got in the second half here I wonder if there going to be any surprises next up is my previous favorite terminal alacrity okay so elac I know has been built on Rust and it's a blazing fast crossplatform open GL terminal emulator this thing is awesome elac is amazing it's built for Linux Mac OS oh and windows but elak has some great features it's excellent out of the box it's very performant and it's built on Rust and it has some cool stuff so I like Lac a lot I'm I know where I'm leaning so let's see where chat's going here all right everyone rate alacrity s to F okay seeing a few s's but a lot of A's a lot of A's are in this one and I got to tell you I agree I am in the a tier as well for elac and there's a couple reasons why you see elac has a lot of great stuff out of the box but it does not support image rendering out of the box and I don't think it supports ligatures either and that will knock it down a peg or two even though it's an amazing terminal I think I'm going to give it an a as well so lacer is an a tier terminal elac could be S tier very easily but there's a couple things out of the box like I said image support and ligatures let's bring that down to an a next up on this list is my personal favorite terminal so I am very biased with it but it's been making the rounds in the community lately because it is an exclusive invite only beta terminal built by Mitchell Hashimoto of Hashi Corp this is a zigg built terminal that has a ton of features built into it and it's even though it's in beta it works unbelievably let me show you we are talking about ghosty and ghosty is my favorite terminal because I use ghosty this is ghosty it works amazing it has great performance it has image rendering as you can see built into it it uses the kitty Graphics protocol for image rendering you can play Doom in this thing it's great it has a lot of features it has so many cool things it even has a terminal inspector so you can inspect the events that are happening in the terminal if you're developing things or you're chasing bugs it's a great terminal I know where I'm leaning for chat for people who have ghosty where would you rate it let's go lag scarpy ghost is an F cuz typecraft likes it come on get out of here that's it I'm Banning you just kidding I Can't Ban one of my best friends never used it but the people who are chiming in I see a lot of s's I see one B you know what I got to tell you even though it is in beta mode it already has more features than a lot of other terminals it's very performant and it is an excellent terminal it's really really great I'm giving gie an S not only for where it currently stands but also its potential as a project okay next up I have looked at this icon for many many years I developed on Mac OS for a long long time as far as I'm concerned this is the default terminal for Mac OS that's right we're talking about iterm 2 iterm 2 is a great terminal for Mac OS I have used it myself for many many years I don't think we even have to go over it because everyone uses this terminal so let's see what Chad has to say seeing b c BB a BB I saw one s get in there lagy scarpy is stuffing the ballots he's cheating stop the count stop the count lagged scarpy he he's cheating he knows it ghosty will be open source but currently it's a private beta because he's trying to let in only so many people at a time to get feedback to make it better before he releases it to the public but it will be open source I agree iterm 2 is not that great for DOT files it's also not that great for importing new themes I don't love that about it but it is basically the default terminal for Mac OS someone said it was mid I think that's a good description of it I term to is solid but mid I'm giving it a b i term two B tier baby next up is a terminal that is extremely popular and very influential the next terminal is Kitty now Kitty I know has developed the kitty Graphics protocol which is an open protocol for rendering images in the terminal and that has been used everywhere and that's amazing so that alone I think would give Kitty at least an a possibly s tier rating I know that kitty is also very performant so let's see what chat has to say about Kitty also I did switch from alacrity to Kitty recently because Kitty has image rendering support built in I then switched to ghosty but ghosty uses Kitty's image protocol so Kitty is responsible for some of ghosty's features that's kind of big that's huge seeing a few s's lagged scarpy a big S big old s s s tier everyone's giving it an S I could see a couple A's but you know what I'm going to have to give Kitty also heroin Henry great great summary heroin Henry yeah Kitty is great I think I'm going to also give Kitty an S because not only because it's a great terminal on its own but it's also so influential and responsible for so many features in other terminals that is an S tier terminal right there all right next up is everyone's favorite Windows terminal we are talking about well Windows terminal so Windows terminal is a thing I've never used because I don't use Windows I use Arch by the way but a lot of people seem to like it I got a lot of people asking me to include it in the tier list maybe it was just a meme and chat wanted to give it an F we'll see what does chat say about Windows terminal ooh a couple of FS but I see a couple of A's this is a very controversial one this is one of the more controversial terminal there is someone gave an s a b SB as far as Windows goes it's an a needs a new tier needs to be below F oh my God the lowest level of hell what theme support is a pain in the ass like I term two okay hi YouTube don't use Windows that's not what we're doing here Vis that's not what we're doing sh since it is a I don't know if beloved is the right word but an enjoyed terminal on Windows and everyone seems to like it I'm skewing towards a all of you people who are saying it's an F I don't think you use Windows I don't have a good view in into this but for all my windows peeps who are really using Windows I'm seeing a lot of A's a lot of s's and some B's so you know what I'm going to do because there's a lot of people in here who hate it it's it's very much this is back and forth here I'm going to go with b b because on Windows it seems like it's solid everyone on Windows seems to like it typ craft is in the pocket of Microsoft no no I think windows on Windows it seems to be a great terminal um someone said with Powershell it works really well I am going to give Windows Terminal A B tier I think that works all right gang next up is a terminal that I think almost needs no introduction every time I make a video about terminals at all everyone mentions this terminal and says it is the best one we're talking about Wes term I haven't actually used it but from what I understand it is well well liked so let's talk about Wes term Wes term is an interesting terminal because I've actually never used it I think it gets more love than even Kitty and ghosty westerm is cool cuz it's got this anime stuff going on and that's always a big Plus in fact that immediately starts it at s tier and it can only go down from there but it seems to have a lot of other great features let's see what we got here for features available features it runs on Linux Mac OS Windows 10 and FreeBSD that's great you have multiple terminal panes you get ligatures okay that's great hyperlink search scroll back xterm style selection of text with mouse this is great I like this okay so Wes term does seem to have a lot of good features it's built for all systems what does chat give it from s to F let's go they replace t-o for me oh it has a good terminal multiplexer okay interesting you know I'm seeing in chat that most people give this an S and whoever doesn't give it an S seems to give it an A so that kind of tells me I should lean towards s for Wes term everyone seems to love it any video I make about terminals talks about Wes term so many comments comment about Wes term people seem to love it so I'm going to give it an S tier I haven't used it before but maybe I'll look into it I got to say this board is getting pretty hilarious because I cannot tell what any of these terminals are I know some of them are this is St one of them is the default terminal app on Macos I forget what these two are oh one of them is gnome terminal but yeah this is I mean it makes sense that the forgettable terminal icons are in the most forgettable tiers is that a coincidence it might be hey get your Icon Game On Track okay next up is a beloved piece of software that everyone loves I have not seen any hate given towards this piece of software at all that's right we are talking about the terminal from VSS code and it's amazing look at this isn't she a be you can do anything you want in this terminal you can open new tabs you can close the tabs and you can even open neovim in It Isn't that cool you can open neovim in VSS codes terminal that's a thing that I think really makes it awesome what file did I just open what is this file I don't remember writing this oh my God okay VSS code terminal let's see what chat says let's see what all my friends say about VSS code terminal you can open neovin by the way I think that gives it S Plus tier dog water we got F we have F minus minus we have a couple S's and an a electron Windows tier we have S we have a c got a couple FS couple FS okay I personally think this is an S tier editor and an S tier terminal but the chat seems to disagree with me we will call it f the terminal in vs code is an F I'm sorry Microsoft it's you've done great things thank you for the LSP stuff but that's a bad terminal last but not least we were talking about a terminal that is enjoyed by everyone especially people with a certain kind of fetish that's right we're talking the foot terminal so let's see what do people like about the foot terminal this is another one that I actually haven't used before some features for foot terminal it's fast lightweight it is whan native de agnostic which I think most terminals are in Linux it has server slm Damon mode it's user configurable font fallback on the Fly font resize on the Fly DPI font size adjustment scroll back search keyboard driven URL detection color Emoji support ime multi-seat and true color 24 BB okay what do we think about foot terminal everyone I'm seeing an a an s a d a lot of nulls f tier for wait Wayland native s tier okay I'm seeing a lot of uh a lot of nulls a lot of B's a lot of s a lot of meh a couple of people say meh I agree yeah you know it's it's something that never really wowed me something that never really jumped out at me like Wes term even though I haven't used it before so because of that I'm going to give foot a c foot is in the C tier to me that's right it's below Windows terminal I agree someone in chat said it needs more anime I 100% agree foot terminal does not have enough anime so that's it gang this is our tier list for some of the more modern terminal emulators that we have at our Disposal today the latest and greatest and it boils down to this we have ghosty Kitty and Wes term in the s tier truly amazing pieces of technology in the a tier we have things like warp and alacrity which are amazing but maybe I have a couple things that are knocking them down a pck or two B tier we have iterm 2 and windows terminal which is great I guess and then from C on down I barely even recognize some of these icons so I'm not going to go over every single one of them but they're garbage just kidding they're pretty cool but I don't use them and neither do most of the people in chat if you want to learn more cool Technologies like Terminals neovim and Linux Please Subscribe and hey thanks nerds