Windows Command Line
Insights from the teams behind Windows Terminal, PowerToys, WinGet, and WSL
Latest posts
Windows Package Manager 1.0
We started a journey to build a native package manager for Windows 10 when we announced the Windows Package Manager preview at Microsoft Build 2020. We released the project on GitHub as an open-source collaborative effort and the community engagement has been wonderful to experience! Here we are today at Microsoft Build 2021… We are excited to announce the release of Windows Package Manager 1.0! Windows Package Manager 1.0 Client The winget client is the main tool you will use to manage packages on your machine. The image below displays executed in Windows Terminal via PowerShell. You can see the list of ava...
Windows Terminal Preview 1.9 Release
Happy Microsoft Build 2021 and happy 2nd birthday to Windows Terminal! This release introduces version 1.9 to Windows Terminal Preview and migrates Windows Terminal to version 1.8. As always, you can install both builds from the Microsoft Store as well as from the GitHub releases page. Let's get into what's new! Default terminal You can now set Windows Terminal Preview as your default terminal emulator on Windows! This means that any command line application will launch inside your selected terminal emulator (i.e. double click on PowerShell and it will open inside Windows Terminal Preview by default 😊). This se...
Windows Package Manager v0.3 Preview
We have been hard at work building new experimental features for the Windows Package Manager. We have just released the Windows Package Manager v0.3 Preview. I would like to share the first major feature to exit experimental status. I also have the privilege of announcing support for Group Policy. What's New Introducing Import I have been through several Windows 10 environments over the last year. It is hard to describe how much pleasure I felt with the simplicity of as I set a new build up so I can become productive. Things have just gotten better with the Windows Package Manager v0.3 Preview. Now I use , an...
The Initial Preview of GUI app support is now available for the Windows Subsystem for Linux
A year ago at BUILD 2020 we introduced our goal to bring Linux GUI applications to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to run Linux GUI applications. We are proud to announce the first preview of this highly anticipated and open source feature! We’ve given this feature the nickname: “WSLg”. Please check out the video below or keep reading to see what you can use this feature for, how it works, and how to install it. What can I use GUI application support for? WSL lets you run a Linux environment, and up until this point has focused on enabling command line tools utilities and applications. GUI app suppo...
WSLg Architecture
If you landed on this blog, you’ve probably seen our announcement for GUI applications support in the Windows Subsystem for Linux being available to Windows Insiders and looking for more details on how WSLg was built. If so, you’ve come to the right place! Be warned that this blog is fairly long and technical. We wanted to tell WSLg’s story, not just the architecture we picked, but also the reasons we made the various choices we made. We hope you find this behind the scenes informative and interesting. Philosophy and early goals When we started looking at supporting GUI applications in WSL, we quickly decided ...
Servicing the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 Linux kernel
Note: This blog post is co-authored by the awesome WSL dev Pierre Boulay. Thanks Pierre! 😊 We’ve just shipped the 5.10.16.3 WSL 2 Linux kernel version to Windows Insiders which brings exciting new changes: Support for the LUKS disk encryption, and some long-awaited bug fixes. We’d like to seize this opportunity to highlight these improvements and show you how these changes land on your Windows machine no matter your Windows version. New feature addition: Support for LUKS disk encryption This kernel update adds support for LUKS disk format. Such disks can now we accessed using wsl –mount. LUKS disks can be...
Windows Terminal Preview 1.8 Release
Welcome back to another release of Windows Terminal! This release updates Windows Terminal Preview to version 1.8 and moves Windows Terminal to version 1.7. Both builds can be installed from the Microsoft Store as well as the GitHub releases page. Let's jump into what's new! Settings UI is default in stable The settings UI now ships inside the Windows Terminal stable build! You can access the settings UI by clicking the settings button in the dropdown menu or by typing Ctrl+,. We are still making improvements to the settings UI experience, so stay tuned for more updates as our releases continue! Shift+Click ...
Windows Terminal Preview 1.7 Release
Welcome back to another release of Windows Terminal! This release migrates Windows Terminal to version 1.6, which includes all of the features from this previous blog post except for the settings UI. Windows Terminal Preview will move to version 1.7, which includes all of the features described below. You can install both Windows Terminal and Windows Terminal Preview from the Microsoft Store or from the GitHub releases page. Let's check out what's new! JSON fragment extensions Windows Terminal now supports JSON fragment extensions. This means that snippets of JSON can be downloaded as extensions that can modify...
Windows Terminal Preview 1.6 Release
Welcome to our first Windows Terminal release of 2021! This release brings new features to Windows Terminal Preview version 1.6 as well as moves Windows Terminal to version 1.5, which includes the features from this previous blog post. You can download both versions from the Microsoft Store or from the GitHub releases page. Below are some of the highlights in this release, however we recommend checking out the release notes to see everything that has improved with version 1.6. Settings UI It's finally here! Windows Terminal Preview now includes the alpha release of our new settings UI. The settings UI is not ye...