Installing and Using the Windows Terminal Preview Edition

published June 25, 2019, last updated March 08, 2024

posted in Customer & Partner Projects Programming

Beginner

Project guide

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. And yes, it is Open Source software.

Features

Multiple tabs
Full Unicode support
GPU-accelerated text rendering
Full customizability

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.

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

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 takes some time and several reboots. Save your work if you plan to upgrade and set aside some time.

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