Windows Terminal Preview 1.23 brings settings to the UI

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Microsoft has released preview version 1.23 of its Windows Terminal command line tool for Command Prompt, PowerShell, WSL and more. The release brings numerous new features for setting settings via the user interface, including display, compatibility, and the selection of profiles in new tabs.

Making settings via UI

As the development team explains, until this release, numerous settings could only be changed in the settings.json file. Now they are also available via the user interface and can be adjusted there in the settings view.

For example, the Display settings page in the UI now includes the option to show a shield icon in the title bar when Windows Terminal is run as Admin. Acrylic material in unselected windows can now also be activated via UI.

The new Compatibility settings page is not only available in the preview version, but will also be backported to version 1.22. This page offers options for running Windows Terminal in the background, activating debugging features and changing the text measurement mode. According to the detailed description, the latter describes how incoming text is grouped in cells. Developers can choose between the Unicode-compliant grapheme cluster method, the wcswidth approach commonly used for UNIX and the Windows console.

The New Tab Menu settings page has also been added, in which settings for the profile selection in new tabs can be defined. Since version 1.17, the drop-down menu for profiles can be customized to change their order or nest them in subfolders. This is now also possible via the user interface, as Microsoft demonstrates. For example, the profiles can be moved using an arrow or – as shown here – using drag-and-drop:

Accessibility updates: Color display and screen reader compatibility

The development team has not only added these and other settings in the UI, but also improved accessibility: The previews of the settings UI are now readable for screen readers and a problem with the high contrast mode has been fixed both in the settings UI and in the command palette. In addition, the color contrast of the Reset button in the Settings UI and the tab contrast colors in High Contrast Mode have been improved.

Terminal download via Microsoft Store or GitHub

Windows Terminal can be obtained from the Microsoft Store or from the corresponding GitHub repository. A canary version – most unstable, but with the latest features – is also available on GitHub. With the release of Preview 1.23, version 1.22 is the current stable release.

All further details on the new preview release can be found on Microsoft's developer blog.

(mai)