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.

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.

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!

This guide was first published on Jun 25, 2019. It was last updated on Jun 25, 2019.

This page (Use) was last updated on Jun 25, 2019.

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