Microsoft Updates Windows Terminal Preview to Version 0.4

Microsoft has rolled out a new update for its Windows Terminal preview application. This is the latest release of the new command line experience for Windows 10, which was announced at Build 2019.

With this new update, Windows Terminal is moving to Preview v.0.4. As this is essentially the fourth major preview bump for the app it comes with some solid new features.

For example, Microsoft has said HTML copy cannot be controvertible. Elsewhere, the tab titles section has received several improvements, such as tabs will have a default name based on its profile. Furthermore, Terminal users can now also double-click and drag to select words.

One important change is Microsoft says settings will no longer be universal across devices. Windows Terminal could previously migrate settings across Windows 10 devices on the same account. The company says this tool turned out to be more trouble than it was worth so has removed it.

Full Changelog

New Features

• HTML Copy!
  • HTML copy is incontrovertible.
    • If you want to paste plain text, the receiving application should provide that option.
• There have been significant improvements to tab titles
  • tabTitle is no longer an override
  • Any opened tab will default to being named after its profile (or tabTitle, if it is set)
  • The shell can read and change this title.
    • CMD likes to append the running command name to the existing title. It can now do that!
• You can now double-click and drag to continue selecting words
  • …and triple-click and drag to continue selecting lines!
• Your settings will no longer roam from machine to machine.
  • We always thought it’d be a good idea to roam settings, but really it ended up being a lot more trouble than it was worth.
  • No longer will your WSL and PowerShell Core profiles from Machine A cause WT to fail to run on Machine B!
  • We’ll migrate them to local storage for you.
    • Even if you’re using a symbolic link!
• You can now bind Ctrl+C to copy and it’ll still send a literal ^C if you don’t have any text selected
• A new selection mode, copyOnSelect, has been added: Text will be copied to your clipboard when you select. Immediately.
• A broader range of settings errors will now result in useful diagnostics instead of useless diagnostics.
• A new key binding action, openNewTabDropdown, has been added. By default, we bind it to Ctrl+Shift+Space.

Changes

• Azure Cloud Shell no longer identifies itself as Visual Studio Code (#2219)
• (Dev builds only) Azure Cloud Shell only shows up if it would actually work on your build. (#2195)
• The settings file will never be rewritten once it exists. (#2475)
• (on 100%-scale displays) UIA text ranges will now appear in the right place on-screen (#2423)

Bug Fixes

• Powershell should no longer crash when you close its tab (#2198)
  • Applications will now receive proper exit events when you close their tabs.
• Tab icons now flicker 100% less often (#2376)
• We won’t crash when you try to split panes for ants — thanks @richardszalay! (#2450)
• Data copied to the clipboard will be kept once you exit WT (#2486)
• It’s a bit harder to accidentally detach the window from its dropdown menu. (#2438)
• The box cursor will be 74% less blurry and 100% more cool (#2491)
• Underlines won’t be in the wrong color any longer! (#2491)
• The windows key will no longer snap on input. (#2514)
• Azure Cloud Shell will no longer fail when it can’t figure out a tenant’s name (#2508)

Windows Terminal

If you are unfamiliar with the new service, the Terminal is a dedicated app for command line implementation on Windows 10. Developers can leverage multiple tabs and customize the experience with themes. On that latter front, you’ll need to edit a JSON file to access the full suite of customization tools.