Windows Terminal Preview 1.21 brings an experimental scratchpad

Microsoft has released the new preview version with features such as Buffer Restore and an experimental scratchpad. Version 1.20 is now stable.

(Image: TippaPatt/Shutterstock.com)

May 13, 2024 at 12:53 pm CEST

2 min. read

Developer

By

Maika Möbus

This article was originally published in German and has been automatically translated.

After more than three months, a new preview for Microsoft's Windows Terminal is now available. Preview 1.21 brings new and experimental features to the command line tool for PowerShell and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), among others. These include Buffer Restore for restoring content and Scratchpad for opening a text box in a separate area of the terminal.

Buffer Restore, Font Fallback and Scratchpad

With the new Buffer Restore feature, the terminal can save content and restore it at startup. To do this, it is necessary to select Open windows from a previous session in the start settings.

There are also new options for font display, including font fallback: The font face setting, which can be defined in the view settings of a profile, can now handle multiple fonts. These must be separated by a comma. If the command line tool cannot find glyphs in the first font, it searches for them in all other fonts.

Another new feature allows developers to choose whether they want to display emojis in full colors. If the option is deactivated, emojis appear as follows:

Emojis lassen sich in Windows Terminal Preview 1.21 monochrom darstellen. — Emojis can be displayed in monochrome in Windows Terminal Preview 1.21.

(Image: Microsoft)

Scratchpad is included as an experimental feature. This opens a new text box in a separate pane of the terminal. This function is made possible by the fact that the development team has refactored the panes to also display non-terminal content. Scratchpad can be activated by adding the following action to the settings.json file:

{"action":"splitPane","type":"scratchpad"}

The action can then be opened via the command palette or via keybinding.

Experimenteller Notizblock: Auf der rechten Seite erscheint eine Textbox als separate Fläche. — Experimental notepad: A text box appears as a separate area on the right-hand side.

(Image: Microsoft)

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Rendering updates for the AtlasEngine

Windows Terminal 1.20 is available as a stable version and makes the AtlasEngine rendering engine the standard. This means that Microsoft has removed the older DxEngine rendering engine in the Terminal's new preview version. Preview 1.21 also includes additional settings for rendering: Developers can select the Graphics API as well as disable partial Swap Chain invalidation.