Scott Hanselman

So you've downloaded the Windows Terminal...now what?

You might initially be underwhelmed. This is a Terminal, it's not going to hold your hand.

The Documentation is just getting started but you can start here! This would be a great way for you to get involved in Open Source, by the way!

• Windows Terminal User Documentation
• Settings are expressed as JSON. You will be more successful if your JSON file editor is something like Visual Studio Code and supports JSON Schema so you'll get intellisense.
  • Check your defaults! Here is my profile.json (which is by no means perfect). I set the requestedTheme, alwaysShowTabs, and my defaultProfile (what shell is the starter shell?)
• Assert and decide on your keybindings. Windows Terminal is very configurable.
  • Any key you press can likely be remapped.
• Are the fonts and colors the way you want them?
  • There are a few terminal themes at https://terminalsplash.com/
  • There are dozens and dozens of iTerm2 Terminal themes here and images of them are here 
• Take it to the next level? Explore background images
  • You can set background images or even animated gifs AND change them at runtime.
• Assert your startingDirectory
  • If you are using WSL you might want your starting directory to be ~ on the Linux file system.
• You can still use Far, GitBash, Cygwin, or cmder if you want! Read the docs!

Here's the big new change that is very exciting!

Windows Terminal Command Line Arguments

You may know you can run Windows Terminal with "wt.exe" and this version now supports Command line arguments! Here's an examples to give you a taste:

• wt ; split-pane -p "Windows PowerShell" ; split-pane -H wsl.exe
• wt -d .
• wt -d c:\github

At this point you can get as advanced as you want. Make other icons, pin them to the taskbar, have a blast. There's subcommands like new-tab, split-pane, and focus-tab.ter

Other Windows Terminal things to note

• I'm also working on a "Open Windows Terminal Here" INF that will add a menu item to your Explorer right click menu (until one day it's included out of the box).
• It's also worth pointing out that the Cascadia Code font comes with multiple "flavors."
• I did a video showing a Mac/Linux person how to set up the Windows Terminal plus WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) and it turned out really well. I encourage you to check it out.

Please share YOUR blogs, YOUR profiles, YOUR favorite themes and terminal hacks as well!

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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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