The terminal WARS begins! // Warp vs Wave

hey everyone this is Christian and today I'd like to compare two really incredible terminal programs the warp and the wave terminal most of you might be already familiar with at least warp a blazing fast modern terminal app with really cool features I've shown you my workflow using war in many of my other videos actually if you've watched any of my recent tutorials where we needed a terminal program you have seen this app but glatza 609 what a nice name by the way so he just told me about wave also a cool and interesting terminal app which is fully open source and it seems to give you quite similar features like warp however once I looked closer at it I found out well there are pretty heavy differences between those two terminal apps so I thought what would be better than just comparing those applications telling you which one I'm using and what terminal app might be better for you depending on what type of requirements you might have so let the terminal Wars begin and let's get into the warp versus the wave terminal all right so let's first talk about the elephant in the room here the licensing and privacy differences as I've already told you in the beginning of this video The Wave terminal is a fully open- source application you can find this project on GitHub by the way leaving you a link in the description of course and here you can find all the information about it the code the docks the installation commands and so on it's all pretty straightforward they also have a checkbox in the W for collecting Telemetry data in the settings menu that you could turn on if you like but this is fully optional and there is a whole section about that part in their official documentation page warp on the other hand is at the time of recording this video a closed Source terminal application on their website they say they're planning to open source at least parts of their app like the rust UI framework and also potentially the entire client code base but none of this has happened yet and honestly I don't believe it's happening in the near future it also requires you to sign up with your email address or use GitHub Google or a single sign on provider otherwise you can't use the terminal app at all and it also asks you to collect Telemetry data but just like in wave this is completely optional and you can turn it on or off in the privacy settings but I know the fact that this application is closed source and requires a sign up that might already be a deal breaker for many people I know this because I've gotten a lot of comments about it on my previous warp videos and I have to say I totally get it yeah I fully understand why people are concerned about that and I agree this is actually something to think critical about because a terminal application this is a place where you are typing in a lot of sensitive information like credentials or API tokens Etc so you have to put a lot of trust into the application and of course the company behind it however I think is pretty transparent with their privacy policy and also the sign up procedure so they are addressing all of these concerns in their FAQ section and they also highlight they are not collecting any input or output from the command prompt my opinion about it and as has always been my opinion as long as they are providing transparent documents and they're not collecting command inputs or output I'm fine with it but of course this is something everyone needs to decide for themselves if you willing to accept this and I would say in a direct comparison the wave terminal is the clear winner here with when it comes to licensing and privacy because it is open source and it does not require you to sign up okay so I believe this already makes the decision a lot easier for some people and if you're just interested in an application being open source or not well then you can close the video right now but let's also have a look at the actual features of the terminal app so what makes the warp and the wave terminal special first of all I have to say both are just great terminal apps otherwise I would not cover them at all here on this channel they are both blazing fast they very clean and modern and they are supporting both of the most common and popular shells bash and zsh warp terminal also supports fish which does not work in wave but come on most people will either use bash or zsh what I absolutely love about both terminals is that they are both block-based terminals so when you're typing in a command and get some output from the console each output is handled as a separate object where you can copy the entire command or just the output or input from the console what what else you could do with those objects however is a bit different in both applications so in the wave terminal for example you can bookmark command blocks in a separate list and this is really cool if you want to remember recently used commands for reference or at a description for documenting them you can also easily restart these commands hide the output or even delete a block entirely from the console lock which is so great if you want to delete mistakes from the command history which actually would be so nice for my tutorial videos where I make a lot of stupid mistakes in the terminal which I might want to hide from you this is not possible in the warp terminal unfortunately because here you can't really delete separate blocks from the command history you would always have to clear the entire screen however the warp terminal has many other powerful features for blocks that are not existing in wave like in warp you can filter all your command blocks and also the output using regular Expressions which is so powerful if you're searching for a specific pattern in a lock output you can also save commands as workflows which I will talk about later in this video and ask the warp AI about this block to ask questions or explain the output also another topic that I will go into a bit more detail in a few minutes and you can also easily share the code blocks as Snippets with an integrated secret masking this is in my opinion also pretty useful both have a very special way of handling the console input like you can enter a command but instead of having to use the keyboard shortcuts or arrow keys to move around the input field you can just use your mouse select text easily change things and you also have a multi-line input in both terminals but the warp terminal takes that to an entire new level because in warp you can really work with this command input like in a code editor by adding a multic cursor that allows you to edit multiple strings at once or change multiple lines at the same time also not to forget warp has a really amazing autoc completion function built right into the terminal app and it supports most of the common CLI tools you might be familiar with on Mac OS or on Linux like it supports Docker Cube CDL anible but also many core utilities like cat CD change Mod change owner there is a huge list on the Ws documentation page about which commands are partially or fully supported by the autoc completion you don't need to install any tool for that in your shell it is all built right into the terminal app and for me personally this is one of the big reasons why I fell in love with the warp terminal wave doesn't have anything like this and despite of the other features and functionalities it might have I believe this is such an important thing that you just need to have in a terminal and this makes warp in my opinion the clear winner when it comes to command input and output handling but let's also have a look at other terminal functionalities that I personally think are just necessary in a modern and Powerful terminal app such as opening multiple tabs splitting terminal windows and so on and here warp also does a pretty good job of giving you all that functionality you can easily add multiple tabs give them a name change the color move them around and you can also split the terminal windows up and down left or right and another nice function you can easily move them with your cursor to reorganize them and of course change the size easily the wave ter also has a nice function for organizing tabs so you could easily create new tabs give them a name a color and also an icon which looks pretty cool and you can even add an SSH connection to them I'll talk about that in more detail in a minute but what is a bit unfortunate in the wave terminal you can't really split the terminal windows in a nice way it has one feature that you can use to move one command block to a sidebar on the right so you could say this is like a splitting function but you can't resize the window you can just choose from one of the two presets to make it a bit wider or smaller and you can't really split the window up or down this also makes warp a winner when it comes to tabs and window splitting because you don't need any other tools for it okay guys so to be honest I wasn't really impressed by the wave terminal at first because it is missing many of the useful features the warp terminal already has built in so you would need to find other plugins and tools for doing autoc completion or window multiplexing but there is one area of the wave terminal that I just want to highlight here and I think this might be very interesting for many people because when you're working a lot in your terminal program you often have to change and addit files and you probably do that in programs like Vim or emac and the wave terminal has a pretty cool feature built in to render the output of the command blocks in different ways like it has a renderer for markdown code files CSV images or even PDF and the way you use it is you just enter the file specific commands with a slash in the terminal to open them for example the slash code edit command opens a file with an integrated code editor that supports even syntax highlighting for all common programming languages and here you can very easily edit the file just like in a code editor with multic cursor support intellisense anything you would need as a programmer without fiding around with Vim emx or any of those other programs so that is really amazing and you can also use other commands to display image PDFs and so on in the exact same way the wp terminal doesn't have anything like this it only has a markdown integration that allows you to view markdown files in your terminal which is nice but not as powerful as the wave renderers so I would say when you're editing files in a terminal a lot and you don't want to use programs like Vim or emex you will love the editing commands in wave which makes this a clear winner when it comes to editing files that gave me some hope that the wave terminal is actually more promising that I thought in the beginning now let's also take a look at how the terminal programs perform for managing remote machines because that's an area which is also pretty important to me because I just have a lot of Linux servers in my home lab that I need to manage and the terminal is just the best place to do that what is really nice in the warp terminal that it has an SSH wrapper so that means when you're connecting to an SSH machine it supports the same features like autoc completion the multic cursor input with the block based output and even the buil-in prompt if you're using it on any Remote device just like on your local machine natively it even has a subshell function that you can use when you're running commands in a Docker container for example and this enables all those features within a subshell that is really cool but wave is also really strong when it comes to managing remote machines over SSH because in the wave terminal you can manage your SSH Connections in a separate menu that you can sync with your SSH config or just Define new connections manually and now it does something pretty clever to organize all these connections because you can add different workspaces in the left sidebar where you can use predefined multiple tabs and assign some of those tabs to an SSH connection and that allows you to add all your remote devices for example into predefined tabs and workspaces where every command input in output is automatically restored in the history even when you're closing the connection or the program and that feature I believe is really nice for Server administrators because you can easily work on your remote machines you can organize them in tabs and workspaces you have a modern terminal for administrating all those devices and you can even use the features of the wave terminal like the code editor command to easily change config files on your remote servers in a very very comfortable way all without having to install anything on the device like Vim emac you can basically forget all that however I still wouldn't call The Wave terminal a clear winner when it comes to managing remote machines simply because of the reason it does not have an autoc completion function it doesn't have great features for window multiplexing and so on so it's kind of a draw between the warp and the wave terminal here you probably just need to decide for yourself so what type of features make the most sense for you what do you think are the most compelling ones like if you prefer having the subshells autoc completion window multiplexing in your remote devices then the warp terminal might be better if you prefer to manage your SSH Connections in an easy way and you like the file editing features then the wave terminal might be the best so you can see it's not easy to do a direct comparison between those programs because they have very different strengths and weaknesses and it's ultimately up to you what do you think are the most compelling and useful features for your personal workflow anyway let's go on because there is another big topic that we need to talk about which is the AI integration and that has always been a strong strong argument for the warp terminal because warp AI is pretty useful I bet you all know the situations where you get some output from the console some error locks or you might ask yourself so what the hell does this lock file mean or you're trying to remember what exactly is the syntax of that one specific good command you just don't know anymore and there are the warp AI can really help you so much in those sitations to explain certain output of the terminal or generate new commands based on your description warp AI uses open AI technology in a very clever and useful way directly in your terminal I've already tested it in previous videos and it's really amazing and the best is you don't need an open AI account for it or an API token you can just use it in the free plan of warp and you get 40 request tokens per month entirely for free if you need more you can also upgrade of course but once I had a look at the wave terminal integrated AI called wave AI I was really surprised how much more powerful this integration is than in warp on the surface the wave Ai and the warp AI integration seem to be very similar to each other you can just start a new wave AI prompt by using the/ chat command and then use it to generate something new or explain a terminal output and of course you can also continue the chat by pressing the control and the space key but now here it comes the wave AI integration gives you a much higher rate limit up to 200 request per day with the integrated llm but it also supports various other llms including cloud-based models and locally deployed models so then you don't need to enable Telemetry at all and you can just run any AI requests by using your own deployed llm at home or you can use an API token from your favorite AI model in the cloud it's totally up to you and I personally love this so much because it gives you an easy and simple way of integrating AI by enabling Telemetry just from for everyone that don't want to think about it like me but if you are much more interested in self hosting AI models or you have your own favorite llm that you just want to integrate you have this option too so I personally think wave terminal is the clear winner when it comes to AI integration even though it was always a strong argument to use warp in the first place but wave just doesn't better so far the wave terminal seems to be killing it in the final round but wait we also need to talk about themes and customization because you might have noticed a weird thing in the wave terminal those missing icons in front of any files in folders when I entered an LS command and that is because wave terminal does not support nerd fonts it simply doesn't which is weird since this is such a basic function to support custom fonts in a terminal but actually wave currently does just have a few system fonts you can choose from and that's it there's literally zero customization configs in the wave terminal honestly to be fair well it ALS also has a dark and a light theme and you can change the colors of the tabs and the icons it also has a section called terminal themes in the settings menu but there's nothing you can select here at least I haven't found out how to integrate any themes that's a bit disappointing I hope that wave terminal will bring more themes and customization settings to their terminal because warp is much better when it comes to that section in the warp terminal you can choose a separate light and a dark theme from the themes menu but of course you can also create your own themes from an image fully automatic or you define everything in a yaml config file you can add a background to those themes you can change the background color if you like that is just much much better and of course it also supports any installed fonts on your device like the N fonts which I use to display icons in my terminal either for files and folders together with the easer command a modern replacement for LS what's also pretty cool in warp it works great with the star prompt that is by the way my absolute favorite terminal prompt and I'm using it to show a couple of details in the terminal customize the look and style for example what is the current project directory what is the git repo or kubernetes context I'm currently working on and warp also has the possibility to add a custom built prompt that you can configure in the app settings that does not look as cool as Starship but it's also nice and it also works on remote devices and let's not forget one absolutely necessary feature for me as a content creator you can pin your terminal input to the top in warp so that when I'm typing in a command for my YouTube tutorial you always have that line at the top of your window and it is never hidden by the YouTube player buttons that is something so important to me and those customization features are all missing in the wave terminal so it has a custom prompt which shows you the current remote machine you're connected to or what directory you located in and whether it's a git repo which is nice but you can't really customize it you can't pin it to the top and it also does not work with Starship or command that print icons in the terminal that is really unfortunate and honestly it might sound stupid but a nice looking terminal is super important to me so the warp terminal is the clear winner when it comes to themes and customization also and I know this video is already pretty long maybe you can already guess what's going to be the overall winner for me personally but just to highlight a few more features that I just love in warp terminal and they don't exist in wave first you have the warp workflows which are part of the warp drive feature so you can Define custom predefined commands with a description variable for any commands that you often need but are hard to remember and just recently a warp also added notebooks to their warp drive which means this is another feature that you can use for writing onboarding guides and tutorials for new team members with descriptions uh integrated code blocks that you can directly execute with a simple click and this is so great for cross collaboration in profession it teams sure it's definitely one of those features that W wants to sell as paid plans to their Enterprise customers however in the free tier of the warp terminal you get all the benefits of the warp personal drive that allows you to store those commands or notebooks for your personal workflows and I think this is really a big plus that does not exist in the wave terminal so when it comes to cross collaboration features W is also the clear winner all right so we made it through that's it about the W and the Wave t two really amazing programs but currently the W terminal keeps to be my favorite one because it has so many useful features that I would miss in the wave terminal especially core features like splitting Windows Auto completion customization the Starship prompt or having the input at the top however I'm really excited to follow the development of the wave terminal I think it does have a huge potential especially because of its local llm integration and it is awesome to administrate remote machines I'm really curious to see what the open source Community might add to the W terminal in the future maybe one day it that will become my new favor terminal app and we need to do this comparison again who knows but yeah we are not quite there yet so that's why I continue using the warp terminal but now it's up to you so please tell me what is your favorite terminal program leave a comment down below and as always many thanks for watching I will catch you in the next video take care bye-bye

Channel: Christian Lempa

Views: 51,059

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Id: -QlMSLIY0JU

Length: 20min 56sec (1256 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2024