Windows Terminal Preview 1.3 Release

Kayla Cinnamon

We are back with another release for Windows Terminal and Windows Terminal Preview! This release adds all of the 1.2 features into Windows Terminal and introduces new features described below for Windows Terminal Preview 1.3. Both builds of Windows Terminal can be installed from the Microsoft Store or from the GitHub releases page. Let’s check out what’s new this month!

Command palette

The command palette is finally here! This new feature allows you to search through all of the commands available to you in Windows Terminal, similar to the one found in Visual Studio Code. You can invoke the command palette by typing Ctrl+Shift+P. If you’d like to change this key binding, you can add the commandPalette command to the keybindings array in your settings.json.

{ "command": "commandPalette", "keys": "ctrl+shift+p" }

The command palette has two modes: action mode and command line mode. Action mode is the mode you will enter by default and will list all of your Windows Terminal commands. Command line mode can be entered by typing > and you can then enter any wt command, which will be invoked on the current window.

You can also customize actions you’d like to add to the command palette by adding commands to your settings.json file. Your key bindings should automatically populate the command palette. Full documentation on how to add your own commands can be found on our docs site.

Image command palette blog

Advanced tab switcher

We have added an advanced tab switcher to help you navigate more easily between your tabs. This is enabled by default with the useTabSwitcher global setting. When enabled, the nextTab and prevTab commands will use the tab switcher. By default, these keyboard shortcuts are Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab, respectively.

"useTabSwitcher": true

Image tab switcher

Tab color setting

You can now specify a tab color for each profile! This can be done by adding the tabColor setting to a profile and setting it to a color in hex format.

Image tab color

💡 TIP: Set your tab color to the same color as your background for a seamless experience!

New commands

We have added some new commands that you can add to your key bindings in your settings.json file. None of the following commands are bound by default.

wt commands as a key binding

We have added the ability to execute wt.exe command line arguments with key bindings. This can be done with the wt command. The commandline property defines the command line arguments you would like to invoke on the current window. More information on wt command line arguments can be found on our docs site.

// This command opens a new tab with PowerShell in a pane, a vertical pane running  the Command Prompt profile in the C:\ directory, and a horizontal pane running the Ubuntu profile.
{ "command": { "action": "wt", "commandline": "new-tab pwsh.exe ; split-pane -p \"Command Prompt\" -d C:\\ ; split-pane -p \"Ubuntu\" -H" }, "keys": "ctrl+a" }

Send input to the shell

If you want to send input to the shell by using a keyboard shortcut, you can do so with the sendInput command. (Thanks @lhecker!)

// This command navigates backwards through the shell history.
{ "command": { "action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[A" }, "keys": "ctrl+b" }

If you are someone who has a lot of tabs open (like myself), this new command is a life saver. You can now search through your tabs in a new search box using the tabSearch command.

{ "command": "tabSearch", "keys": "ctrl+c" }

Image tab search

Change color scheme

You can set the color scheme of the active window by using the setColorScheme command.

{ "command": { "action": "setColorScheme", "colorScheme": "Campbell" }, "keys": "ctrl+d" }

Bug fixes

🐛 You can now specify which types of formats you would like to copy.

🐛 Profiles whose indices are greater than 9 will now properly display their shortcuts in the dropdown. (Thanks @MichelleTanPY!)

🐛 altGrAliasing: false will no longer break AltGr

Top contributors

We had a lot of wonderful contributions this month and we’d like to recognize those who especially made an impact!

Contributors who opened the most non-duplicate issues

🏆 KalleOlaviNiemitalo

🏆 skyline75489

🏆 Fcscanf

🏆 pcgeek86

Contributors who created the most merged pull requests

🏆 j4james

🏆 MichelleTanPY

🏆 javierdlg

🏆 lhecker

🏆 schorrm

Contributors who provided the most comments on pull requests

🏆 mrange

🏆 j4james

🏆 schorrm

Until next time

We hope you like these latest additions to Windows Terminal Preview! All of our documentation can be found at docs.microsoft.com. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to Kayla (@cinnamon_msft) on Twitter. If you find any bugs or would like to request a new feature, you can file a new issue on GitHub. We will see you in September for our next release!

Image 08 2020 signatures

13 comments

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  • Fred Falk 0

    This app is a real lifesaver! Keep up the awesome work!

    Plus tab switcher is super helpful!

    Regards
    Fred
    WPG

  • Peter Vernam 0

    Wow! I really like Windows Terminal, and especially the tab feature.

    I have half a dozen tabs, each set to a different directory with a different color and custom name. But, when I reboot, all of that goes away and I have to setup all of these tabs again. Is there some way that I can save a configuration, including the command history for each tab? I can’t find a way, but the fact that there’s a “Restore” choice in the menu that is displayed when I right-click on the title bar suggests that there might be. If there isn’t, I think this would be a great enhancement.

  • Mehar Muzammal 0

    Awesome Update! I really like this amazing feature in windows. Windows terminal is so amazing. Thank you so much. I Write a review about this update on my website. Check It. Thank You lasxpress.com

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