Windows Terminal Preview 1.7 is here and it comes new features including Windowing improvements, JSON fragment extensions support, read-only panes, and more as detailed by a recent blog post by Kayla Cinnamon, Program Manager at Microsoft. You can install both Windows Terminal and Windows Terminal Preview from the Microsoft Store or from the GitHub releases page. In addition, Windows Terminal is updated to version 1.6 and includes everything except for the settings UI. Unlike Command Prompt and PowerShell, Windows Terminal is a modern app with Unicode and UTF-8 character support, GPU accelerated text rendering, custom themes, and can also run Linux GUI apps directly.
As OnMSFT reported on the Settings UI on Windows Terminal Preview 1.6 previously, the settings UI is now attached to the Settings button in the dropdown menu, making it the default experience for those using Windows Terminal Preview. The most notable new feature is the Windowing improvements available in Windows Terminal Preview 1.7.
“A new global setting has been added called windowingBehavior, which allows you to set where new instances of Windows Terminal launch. Options include a new window (“useNew“), an already existing window (“useAnyExisting“), and an already existing window on this desktop (“useExisting“). This setting can be found on the Startup page of the settings UI.”
Another new addition is the read-only feature for panes. This feature allows Windows Terminal Preview users to use the “toggleReadOnlyMode” command to stop all inputs into windows. This is a helpful addition as it will avoid unwanted or accidental key presses during a build. It is important to note that not every setting is available through the settings UI at the moment. Check out the Microsoft docs website for a full list of possible settings. Other improvements include a new Actions page, which shows you all all of the keyboard shortcuts that are available to use in Windows Terminal Preview. As Cinnamon noted in her blog post, “our next step is to make actions editable in the settings UI, so you can customize these keyboard shortcuts without having to go to your settings.json file.”
Are you looking forward to the next Windows Terminal Preview release? Let us know in the comments!
