Windows 10

The much anticipated Windows Terminal Preview is here and I have to say, when it works, it's pretty awesome. While it shows great promise, as this is a very early preview, you should expect to see some bugs, crashes, and quirks that will be fixed in future builds.

Microsoft briefly made the preview available on the Microsoft Store earlier yesterday, but they were just gearing up for its release and it was not ready. The working version of Windows Terminal is now available from the Microsoft Store, which is based on version 0.2.1715.0.

To get the the Windows Terminal Preview you need to make sure you are running Windows 10 version 1903 and on build 18362.0 or higher. If you meet the requirements, you can go to the Microsoft Store and search for Windows Terminal to install it.

Windows Terminal (Preview) in Microsoft Store

Once you install Windows Terminal and open it, it will start with a single PowerShell window open. To open another console tab of the same type, you can click on the + symbol as seen below.

Windows Terminal
Windows Terminal

To open other types of consoles in a new tab, you can click on the down arrow and it will display options to launch all known Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) shells and the CMD prompt . Simply select the one you want and the selected console will open in a new tab.

Open New Console Tab
Open New Console Tab

To exit a console, you can simply click on the X in its tab or type exit in the console window.

Configuring the Windows Terminal

The settings for Windows Terminal are contained in a JSON file called %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\RoamingState\profiles.json. You can also open the settings by clicking on the down arrow in Windows Terminal and selecting Settings.

This file allows you to configure various options such as global settings, console sizees, keybindings, color schemes, and console profiles.

profiles.json Settings File
profiles.json Settings File

When Windows Terminal is first installed, it will automatically create profiles for PowerShell, the CMD prompt, and any installed WSL Linux distributions.  If you add a new Linux distribution in the future, you will need to add a new profile to profiles.json file.

For example, I installed Ubuntu after installing Windows Terminal. In order to get it to show as a supported shell, I had to add a profile for it as shown below by copying an existing profile and changing a various settings.

Ubuntu Profile

In my tests, any changes to the profiles.json settings file go into effect immediately after you close the file.

Information about the various settings can be found here. These settings range from creating new color schemes, changing the cursor type, changing the image assigned to a profile, and more.

Windows Terminal is great, but has some bugs

It is important to remember that this is a very early preview of the Windows Terminal and you will find bugs and quirky behavior.

One example of a user interface change that is needed is seen when you launch multiple console tabs. For example, in the image below it looks like I have a PowerShell console tab and a WSL tab open.

Two Console Tabs Open ?
Two Console Tabs Open ?

In reality, though, I also have a CMD prompt open as well, but you can't see it until you expand the width of the window. This needs to be fixed by providing an option that removes the path from the tab descriptions.

Actually I Have Three Tabs Open
Actually I Have Three Tabs Open

Also while playing with with Windows Terminal and opening new tabs, within 5 minutes I was able to trigger a crash, which I could not reproduce again.

Crash

Microsoft knows this build isn't perfect and expects problems. They are hoping that users will test the software and report any bugs on the Windows Terminal GitHub page. Even more, they are hoping other developers want to contribute to the Windows Terminal project with their own ideas, code, and fixes.

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