Microsoft revealed in May 2019 that it was working on an open source terminal application for Windows which it called Windows Terminal. The company released the first preview of Windows Terminal in June 2019 and regular updates in the months that followed.
Yesterday, the company announced that Windows Terminal 1.0 is available. The first stable version of the terminal application is available as a download from the Microsoft Store and from the GitHub repository.
The program requires Windows 10 version 18362.0 or higher (that is Windows 10 version 1903 or higher); it won't run on earlier versions of Windows 10.
Windows Terminal
Windows Terminal supports multiple command line applications as well as tabs and panes. One of the main advantages of Windows Terminal is that it is possible to use multiple terminal applications from a single window.
Users can load PowerShell, the Command Prompt as well as other terminals including those provided by installed Windows Subsystem for Linux distributions next to each other. Options include displaying these as tabs or in a single tab as panes.
Another strength of Windows Terminal is that it supports customization options. These include changing backgrounds, color schemes, fonts, key bindings and more.
Windows Terminal makes use of GPU acceleration to render text. Microsoft notes that the feature improves the user experience significantly. The program supports Unicode and UTF-8 and features Microsoft's latest font, Cascadia Code. Interested users can check out variants of the font on the official GitHub repository.
Windows Terminal Preview
Microsoft launched a preview channel for Windows Terminal to showcase and test new features. The channel will receive monthly updates from June 2020 on according to Microsoft. Interested users can check out the Windows Terminal Preview page on the Microsoft Store or the GitHub releases page.
Closing Words
Windows Terminal is an open source terminal application for Windows to run one or multiple command line applications. The support for tabs and panes makes it an excellent tool for users, administrators or developers in particular, who use different command line applications regularly.
Windows Terminal is only available for recent versions of the company's Windows 10 operating system and only supplied as a Microsoft Store application.
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