Watching the Build keynotes, I saw that the new Windows Terminal has been released. It looks mildly interesting, as I really like ConEmu, but it’s something that will be on every machine at some point, and I ought to get used to using it. I like that Bash and Azure Cloud Shell are in here, so I decided to try it.
The URL given in the keynote was aka.ms/terminal. This gets you to the Windows Terminal site, with a great animated opening. Give it a moment if you don’t see anything right away.
Installing
The “Get/Install” link you see will want to open the Microsoft Store app on Windows 10. You do need to have version 18362.0 or better. Type “Ver” at a command prompt to get your version.
It installs quickly and you can get moving right away.
When my new Windows Terminal launched, it started with PowerShell, which is likely a good default. Most cmd utilities work, so this makes some sense. I find myself in PoSh quite often when I run ConEmu.
In the title bar are two things. There is a +, which opens a new tab. This is your default tab, which seems to be PoSh. I’m sure you can change this.
The drop down arrow next to this gives you choices. The defaults I see are shown below (PoSh, Ubuntu, cmd.exe, and Azure Cloud Shell). There are shortcuts here you can use.
The settings is interesting. If I click this, I was surprised that this happened:
This is a settings.json file, and you’ll need to know JSON to edit this. You can see my default file below:
There are quite a few things you can change here, and I keep debating about the copyOnSelect option, which might be useful, but it might also be something I’m not expected.
One thing I was interested in is changing the colors a bit. There’s a bit description of colors on their site, and I added a property to me default section. I’m not digging into profiles now, but I do want the colors to change. Let’s try one of the built in styles.
I tab back and I see the change immediately.
I’ll play with the schemes and see how I like them. For now, the Vintage one looks good.
I need to do more Azure stuff and play with Linux more, so I’m going to give Windows Terminal a chance and see how it works.
If you don’t love the built in cmd.exe, you can give this a try and see what you think. I do like the choice of terminals handy, and I can see myself adding one for Python at some point.