Installing and Using the Windows Terminal Preview Edition

Installing and Using the Windows

Terminal Preview Edition

Created by Anne Barela

https://learn.adafruit.com/installing-and-using-the-windows-terminal-preview-edition

Last updated on 2024-06-03 02:49:22 PM EDT

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Table of Contents

Overview

• Features

• Requirements

Upgrading Windows 10

The Windows Terminal App

Use

• Multiple Tabs

• Erase Line

• Beautiful text

• Text Sizes

• Shells Available

• See what's new

• That's all well and good...

Customizations

• Background

• Colors

• Other Items

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Overview

The Windows Terminal is a new, modern, fast, efficient, powerful, and productive

terminal application for Windows 10 users of command-line tools and shells like

Command Prompt, PowerShell, and the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Its main

features include multiple tabs, Unicode and UTF-8 character support, a GPU

accelerated text rendering engine, and (with a bit of JSON editing) custom themes,

styles, and configurations.

Many command line users have wanted a more customizable, more feature packed

command line since, well, Windows 2.0 (or MSDOS 2.0 if you're older). Microsoft has a

team dedicated to this project and makes all their code available for user

contributions via GitHub(https://adafru.it/F8H). And yes, it is Open Source software.

Features

Multiple tabs

Full Unicode support

GPU-accelerated text rendering

Full customizability

This guide is intended to get you started with kicking the tires of the Windows

Terminal Preview released on June 21, 2019.

Requirements

Windows 10 version 18362.0 or higher

•

Using the preview Windows Terminal app requires Windows 10 version 18362 or

later (May, 2019). It will not work on prior versions of Windows like XP, Windows 7,

or 8.

•

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If your version of Windows is older than the May, 2019 update, you'll need to upgrade

your version of Windows 10. See the next page on steps to do that.

Upgrading Windows 10

You can check your version of Windows 10 by clicking the Start icon in the lower left

of the screen, click the gear icon (Settings) then Update and Security then on the

right "OS build info". You should get a screen similar to that above. See the version

and date under Windows Specifications.

You will need the May 2019 Update (or better) to get the features used in this article.

Directly upload the update by going tohttps://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-

download/windows10(https://adafru.it/CUF). Click the Update now button to get the

update. This saves time over looking to update from the Settings.

Upgrading Windows takes some time and several reboots. Save your work if you

plan to upgrade and set aside some time.

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When complete, check the OS version again as described at the top of this page and

ensure it is 18362.145 or higher.

The Windows Terminal App

If you've found the Microsoft Windows (app) Store, you know how convenient it is. If

you haven't used it yet, we'll show you how.

The update process will take some time. You can continue to work during the

download process but save your work before agreeing to install. The PC will

reboot several times during the installation.

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Click the Start button, lower left of the

screen and find the Microsoft Store tile, a

shopping bag with the Windows four pane

logo on it. Clock the time.

If you don't see the icon, in the search bar

at the bottom, type "Microsoft Store" and it

should be a top result.

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The Microsoft Store window will pop up

similar to the one at left.

Click Search then type "Windows

Terminal". Windows Terminal Preview

should be the first one, select that.

The app window shown at the top of this

guide page will pop up.

The app is free. Click the Get button -

unless you have a "See System

Requirements" link below the Get button -

it's likely you need to upgrade WIndows 10

as shown on the previous page of this

guide.

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Use

Run the program from the Start Menu, recently added group. If you don't have that on

your Start Menu, in the search in the bar at the bottom, type "Windows Terminal".

Run the program from the Start Menu,

recently added group. If you don't have

that on your Start Menu, in the search in

the bar at the bottom, type "Windows

Terminal". The search should find the app

as in the example at left.

When the application runs, you should get

the Windows Terminal similar to the picture

at the top of this page, which is familiar to

command line users and especially

PowerShell users. This is one of three

types of shells available out of the gate.

Multiple Tabs

You can have multiple shells open by clicking the "+" on the bar at the top of the

window. You'll be presented with another instance of the terminal in a tab in the top.

You can switch between tabs just as you do with a web browser. Switch between tabs

with <control>-tab.

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Erase Line

If you don't like the line you're working on, press the Esc key to erase the whole line.

Beautiful text

The Windows Terminal uses a GPU accelerated DirectWrite/DirectX-based text

rendering engine. This new text rendering engine will display text characters, glyphs,

and symbols present within fonts on your PC, including CJK ideograms, emoji,

powerline symbols, icons, programming ligatures, etc. This engine also renders text

much faster than the previous Console’s GDI engine!

Text Sizes

You can increase/decrease the terminal text font size dynamically with Control-scroll

wheel.

Shells Available

Click the "v" next to the "+" in the top bar (next to the tabs) to get options. By default

there are three command line types available.

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The three types of command lines/shells:

PowerShell

Windows Command Line (cmd, aka DOS

Box)

Windows Subsystem for Linux (bash)

See what's new

See the video below which shows some of the Windows Terminal team members

talking about the new features.

That's all well and good...

What about changing the look and feel? See the next page on customizations!

Customizations

The command line windows are very customizable. Use the down arrow ("v") on the

top bar then Settings.

The program will ask you what program you want to edit the settings file (in JSON

format). If you have a vanilla Windows 10 install, selecting Notepad is fine. Notepad++,

a third party app, makes editing this easier.

Background

Credit: HowToGeek.com(https://adafru.it/F8I)

Every command window type can have a different background picture.You can

change the background to any type of image file you like—a PNG, a JPEG, or yes: an

animated GIF.

To change the background of any of the shells, you’ll first need to place the image file

in a location the Terminal App can read. Windows Terminal is a Universal Windows

Platform (UWP) app, so it prefers to use its ownAppData folder(https://adafru.it/F8J).

AppData is a folder you usually find in the User Profile and is used for storing program

settings. UWP apps create a custom AppData folder and use that instead. Windows

Terminal’s AppData folder is located in:

%LOCALAPPDATA%

\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\RoamingState

Just copy that into File Explorer’s path bar and hit Enter; you’ll be taken to the correct

location. Place your image files here, and Windows Terminal can use them for

backgrounds.

Open Settings in Windows Terminal, and scroll to the profile you want to change.

There are several profiles under the ” "profiles" : ” section. Each corresponds to

an option in the menu: Cmd, PowerShell, Linux distros, and so on. You can tell which

is which by examining the ” commandline ” or ” name ” line in each section.

To change the background image for one of these sections, under the "icon" line,

add the following lines:

"backgroundImage" : "ms-appdata:///roaming/yourimage.jpg",

"backgroundImageOpacity" : 0.75,

"backgroundImageStrechMode" : "fill",

Where “yourimage.jpg” is the name of your image or gif file. Make sure every line in

the section—except the last one—ends with a comma.

If you’re using a GIF file, you may want to change the “fill” to “uniformToFill” instead.

You may end up with a black box around the GIF with “fill,” but have it be fine with

“uniformToFill.”

Save the file, and your changes should show up immediately, even with the Windows

Terminal open.

Colors

You can see the various colors used in hexadecimal format - #RRGGBB with RR the

red component, GG the green, and BB the blue. You can look up other colors to

change text and other element items to the color of your choice.

I like the color picker at W3schools.com(https://adafru.it/BPY) although there are

many others.

Save a backup of the JSON file in case you need to restore a setting gone wrong.

Then you can select the color in the color picker and get the 6 digit hex value to type

into the JSON file for the item you wish to change. When you save the new JSON file,

it should take effect.

Other Items

The customization, to include fonts, is a moving target at present. We suggest looking

on the web if you would like to customize further as people publish their tricks and

tips.

Microsoft has said the font capability changes are incomplete at this time, although

others appear to be tweaking this. Buyer beware in this.

This is a preview build so the development team may be changing various

features, including customization capabilities, as development proceeds.