The installation is straightforward so we won’t cover that in this article and will assume you’ve already installed it. There are two different versions you can download the standard Windows Terminal and the Windows Terminal Preview.įor the purposes of this article, you can use either one. There are a few different ways to install Windows Terminal, but the easiest by far (and the Microsoft-recommended way) is to install it from the Microsoft Store.

Shell: The program between the terminal and the operating system.

Console: Any console host application that is not the Windows Terminal.

Terminal: The Windows Terminal application.

Scott Hanselman has a great blog post on the definitions of each, but here is how they’ll be used in this article:

The C++ (v142) Universal Windows Platform Tools Component Installedīecause we’ll be covering many terms in this article, it’s important to first get a grasp on some terminology differences so you don’t get confused.Įven though the concepts are similar, it’s important to note that a terminal is not a console is not a shell.

The Universal Windows Platform Development Component Installed.

The Desktop Development with C++ Component Installed.

Python with the rich text library installed.

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) feature enabled with a Linux distribution installed (all demos shown are using Ubuntu 20.04).

If you want to follow along with all of the demos in this article, you’ll need a few other tools installed as well: All you need is a Windows 10 machine with build 1903 (May 2019) or later. The requirements to install and use the Windows Terminal itself are pretty basic. Customizing how the Windows Terminal is Opened.

The settings.json file: Customizing all the things.

Windows terminal color schemes