Windows Terminal

Windows Terminal is Microsoft's open-source terminal application for Windows 10 2004 (build 19041) and later. It hosts any command-line program, including Command Prompt, PowerShell, Azure Cloud Shell and WSL distributions such as Ubuntu, each as its own profile in a tabbed window. It is written in C++ and lives in the same repository as conhost.exe, the original Windows console host, and reuses console components such as the VT parser, the text buffer and the DirectWrite-based text layout and rendering engine. Microsoft built it because the console host's commitment to backward compatibility blocked features such as tabs, full Unicode and emoji. It suits developers who work in PowerShell, CMD and WSL side by side.

Text is rendered on the GPU, with a software renderer (WARP) available through experimental.rendering.software. Tabs can be torn off into new windows or dragged into existing ones. Panes split a tab vertically, horizontally, or in any direction with the splitPane action (Alt+Shift+Plus and Alt+Shift+Minus by default). The wt command line builds layouts at launch with subcommands such as new-tab and split-pane, choosing a profile and starting directory for each. Naming a window _quake (wt -w _quake) gives a drop-down quake-mode window.

Settings live in settings.json and can also be edited in a graphical settings UI. Profiles for PowerShell and WSL distributions are created automatically when those shells are installed, and other applications can add profiles or color schemes through JSON fragment extensions. Every keyboard shortcut is an action that can be rebound, and a command palette lists them. Per-profile appearance options include color schemes, background images and GIFs, acrylic transparency, OpenType font features (which can switch ligatures off), an experimental retro CRT effect, and custom pixel shaders. Release notes also show Sixel image support.

Windows Terminal runs only on Windows. The Microsoft Store is the recommended install because it updates automatically. Builds installed manually from GitHub releases do not update themselves, and older Windows 10 builds may need the VC++ Desktop Framework Package.

Installation

# via winget
winget install --id Microsoft.WindowsTerminal -e

# via Scoop (unofficial)
scoop bucket add extras
scoop install windows-terminal