Microsoft’s new Windows 10 command line experience is reaching a year old. However, Windows Terminal remains in preview as the company continues to tweak it ahead of its version 1.0 full launch. Now, it seems Microsoft is nearly ready for that release. Last week, the final Windows Terminal preview was rolled out.
Importantly, this is not just a final update to stabilize the final build. Instead, Microsoft has added some new features to Windows Terminal.
For example, the wt execution alias now functions with command line arguments. This means dev’s can start Windows Terminal with tabs and panes in the configuration they want and the profiles they like.
Furthermore, this support allows Terminal to detect PowerShell and create an automatic profile for the user. Elsewhere in the new update, Microsoft has added a global setting to allow users to hide the “Close All Tabs” dialog.
That’s not all as Terminal also gets some non-feature changes. For example, developers can now use the Narrator to navigate commands word-by-word. Below is a list showing the rest of the changes.
- Ctrl+Ins and Shift+Ins are bound by default to copy and paste respectively
- You can now hold Shift and click to expand your selection
- VS Code keys used for key bindings are now supported
- Terminal won’t crash when Narrator is running
- Terminal won’t crash when you provide an invalid background image or icon path
- Our popup dialogs all now have rounded buttons
- The search box now works properly in high contrast
- Some ligatures will render more correctly
Terminal Development
Windows Terminal is a new command prompt experience for 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.
The app was launched in preview in June via the Microsoft Store. Microsoft says the full app will be made available in April 2020, alongside Windows 10 20H1.