Windows Terminal
Windows Terminal is a multi-tabbed terminal emulator developed by Microsoft for Windows 10 and later as a replacement for Windows Console. It can run any command-line app in a separate tab. It is preconfigured to run Command Prompt, PowerShell, WSL and Azure Cloud Shell Connector, and can also connect to SSH by manually configuring a profile. Windows Terminal comes with its own rendering back-end; starting with version 1.11 on Windows 11, command-line apps can run using this newer back-end instead of the old Windows Console.
Since Windows 11 22H2 and Windows Terminal 1.15, Windows Terminal replaces Windows Console as the default.
History
Windows Terminal was announced at Microsoft's Build 2019 developer conference in May 2019 as a modern alternative for Windows Console, and Windows Terminal's source code first appeared on GitHub on May 3, 2019. The first preview release was version 0.2, which appeared on July 10, 2019. The first stable version of the project was on May 19, 2020, at which point, Microsoft started releasing preview versions as the Windows Terminal Preview app, which could be installed side-by-side with the stable version.Features
Terminal is a command-line front-end. It can run multiple command-line apps, including text-based shells in a multi-tabbed window. It has out-of-the-box support for Command Prompt, PowerShell, and Bash on Windows Subsystem for Linux. It can natively connect to Azure Cloud Shell.Terminal augments the text-based command experience by providing support for:
- Notebook tabs, to hold multiple instances in a single window
- ANSI VT sequence support
- UTF-8 and UTF-16
- Hardware-accelerated text rendering via DirectWrite
- Modern font and font feature support
- 24-bit color
- Window transparency effects
- Themes, background images and tab color settings
- Different window modes
- Split panes
- Command palette
- Jump list support
- Microsoft Narrator compatibility via a User Interface Automation tree
- Support for embedded hyperlinks
- Copying text to clipboard in HTML and RTF format
- Mouse input
- Customizable key bindings
- Incremental search
- Terminal shortcut
- Sixel support