The new Windows Terminal. I made a video about it a couple years ago when it was
just version 1.0 and initially released, but 15 versions later we are now up to version
1.15 for the stable version and 1.16 in the prerelease. So I figure since most
people aren't exactly keeping track, I can make an update video with some of the most
significant changes in that time span so you can get a better idea of the capabilities now.
And while I can't go through every single little change and feature,
and I don't think you'd want to see that either, I figure I can do quickly a rapid fire of maybe
one or two of the most significant new features and changes in my opinion,
for each version. But anyway, with all that being said, let's just get into it.
In update 1.1, they added the "Open in Terminal" option to the right- click context menu. And if
you have in the settings for your profile, "Use Parent Process Directory", then when you do that,
it will take you directly to the current directory when you open up Terminal,
with whatever profile you're using, such as Windows PowerShell or Command Prompt.
And also if you open any other profiles, it will also go to that same directory. So
this makes it a lot easier than having to open the Terminal and then CD into
whatever directory you want to go to. In 1.2, they added a "Always On Top" option,
pretty self explanatory, and also a focus mode where it basically removes the title bar.
So it just has the Terminal, and you can access that via the command palette,
which I'll mention in a second. So in update 1.3, that's when they added that Command Palette
I just talked about. So you can press either Control + Shift + P as the default command,
or you can click the arrow dropdown and click Command Palette there.
And it basically just shows you all the possible commands and keyboard shortcuts,
if one is assigned to that. So these are all different options or actions
Terminal can do. And if you want to change or add a shortcut to one of these commands,
you can go into the settings and then go to the Actions section.
And there it shows all the actions that are currently assigned a keyboard shortcut. But
if one isn't there, you can click Add New to add any of the others to add a
shortcut. In update 1.4, they added the jump list. So if you right click on the Terminal,
if it's pinned to the taskbar, you can just open a profile directly, it'll show all the lists.
And this also applies if you go into the Start Menu, it'll also show the profiles. In 1.5,
they added full hyperlink support, which means that immediately after any URL appears in the
window, whether you just typed it or pasted it, you can see it'll be underlined. And if
you want to open that URL or hyperlink, you can hold down Control and click it,
and that will open it. Just clicking it won't open it, so you have to Control
Click to activate it. In update 1.6, they added a feature I was waiting for,
which is to have a default setting to open multiple profiles at the startup. So for example,
PowerShell and Command Prompt instead of just one. Now in my previous video,
I mentioned how you could achieve this using a shortcut, but you had to use a shortcut.
Now that's no longer the case, you can simply now go into the JSON config file and use the
"startupActions" object in there. Whereas before you could only do it with a shortcut. Also in 1.6,
they added the settings UI, which was a huge update. Before you had to use the JSON config
file for everything. I'm not going to go into detail for every single one of these.
You can just look through these yourself, but there are sections for startup options like the
default profile, for interaction, appearance, color schemes, mostly self explanatory. Also,
you can choose default settings that applies to all profiles unless you
go into each individual profile and change that for that individually.
So you can customize it on multiple levels. Or of course you could also add a new profile by
simply adding an empty one or duplicating a previous one to use that as a base. In 1.7,
they added a feature called JSON Fragment Extensions, which effectively lets you download
or share color schemes and profiles without having to mess around with your main JSON config file.
It makes it way easier to set those up without having to go into a bunch of nonsense,
and I'll show you what I mean by that. So basically now, you can simply make a
JSON file that includes the same JSON syntax with profiles and/or a color scheme. Like this example,
it has "Cool Profile". And for the color scheme, "Postmodern Tango Light".
Now what you could do is copy and paste this code into your main JSON config file,
but you'd have to make sure you put it in the right spot with the right formatting, it could be
a pain. Whereas instead you can simply take this whole JSON file that someone may have given you,
and put it into one of these two directories, depending on whether you want it to be available
for all users or just that current user. You can just name the JSON file whatever you want.
And for the "app-name" part of this path, you can just name that folder,
whatever you want as well. And also if the directory you want to put it in doesn't exist,
you can simply create it. Then when you next launch the Terminal, those profiles and color
schemes will be available. You can see this Cool Profile one is now there. In update 1.8,
they added the ability to Shift Click on a profile, and then that would open it in
a new window instead of just a new tab. They also added the "unfocusedAppearance" setting,
which controls how the window looks when it's not the active
window. Though you do have to manually set this in the JSON file yourself.
There's a list of possible appearance options that you can change, and have
only apply if the window is unfocused. And to do that within each profile,
you add the "unfocusedAppearance" object. And then within that, you'd put whatever
one of those options you want to apply. So to demonstrate this in a really obvious way,
I can set the background color of this one to a hex code for a shade of red.
And you can see when I click off it, it turns red. But again, there's several
different ways you can make it look, not just the background color. In version 1.9,
that's when they added the Add new Profile option in the settings. Like I mentioned before,
you can either duplicate a profile to use it as a starting point, or add an empty one.
You can set whatever name you want for it. Like "Example", you can choose whether it
shows up in the list, and also you can have it run a command when it runs. For the icon,
you can also set that to whatever you want, even emojis. And you can also set
the tab title if you don't want it to change automatically, and a few other settings.
And now you can see when I added that, it now shows up in the list along with the
others. Also in 1.9, they added what they call Quake Mode, where if you press the Windows Key,
Shift, and then the Tilde key, it opens up a focus mode Terminal across the top
of the screen. And then you could press the same key combination to minimize it again.
For this to work, the Terminal does need to be already running,
though there is an option in the settings to have the Terminal minimized to the system tray,
and also have it start with windows. Though I'm not sure if there is a way
to minimize it on startup, but I'm sure you could probably figure out how to do that.
In update 1.10, they added a shortcut in the dropdown to go to the Command Palette,
so it's not necessary to use the shortcut anymore if you don't want. In 1.11,
they added a few things such as the Minimize To Tray option, like I mentioned just a minute ago.
They also added the acrylic title bar, so you can now see it's kind of blurry,
you can have it semi transparent. Whereas before it had to be a solid color. They
also added the ability to drag and drop a folder onto the plus icon.
And that will open that path in the default profile you have set. So you can see here,
it went right to this test folder. In 1.12, that's when they added the
setting that lets you change the Terminal to be the default command line in Windows.
And you can set this to either the preview or the normal stable build. And you can also set
it to one of the old ones if you want to. Though I believe if you install Windows 11,
it's just the default one anyway. For version 1.13, they added the ability
to have a profile automatically open as an admin. So for example,
you could duplicate a profile and make an admin version of it, like this one.
And then that'll be added to the list so you can select it. Though it does make it open
in a new window, not just a new tab, because technically it's being opened as a different
user. And since it opens admin Terminal in a new window anyway, here's a quick tip that I did.
I basically set the preview Terminal to have all the profiles automatically open as admin.
So if I'm in a directory and I know that I want to do something as admin,
I can simply choose to open the preview Terminal and then that will get the job done,
instead of having to open the regular Terminal and then escalate it and take an extra step. In 1.14,
they added an experimental feature to let you set the background image for the entire window,
even if you have split panes. Instead of displaying the image like this by default,
which is where the image is shown separately in each pane.
It is a global setting only, so this is going to apply to all profiles. Though it
does seem to be a little bit buggy because when I tried to enable it,
it got rid of the background color. So the image looks extra transparent, and
also for profiles that don't have an image as a background, it just makes them fully transparent.
So that's kind of weird, but it is still experimental. Oh, and if you like these
background wallpapers, by the way, I made them myself. You can get them for free at ThioJoe.art,
you can download them, they're in like super high resolution. And now we're up to version 1.15,
which is the latest stable channel build as of making this video.
In this update, they added keyboard selection, AKA mark mode, where you press Control+Shift+M,
you can use the arrow keys to start moving the cursor around
to the starting position. And then if you hold Shift and then use the arrows,
it will select from that starting position and you can select that way.
Also in this update, they add an experimental feature called Scroll Marks,
where you can add markers, sort of like bookmarks, to page through. And the marks
also appear on the right scroll bar. I couldn't really get this working myself,
but you could see the demo on the blog they have. Again it's experimental,
I'm sure they'll work out how it works better in the future. Now as for the latest preview build,
which is version 1.16, there's also a new feature in there worth mentioning called Themes. These
appear in the existing Themes option in the appearance section of the settings.
Whereas before you could only choose light or dark, like later dark version of Windows,
you can now add additional themes in there. Which basically adjust the colors for the
Terminal window in general. And to add a theme, you add it into the JSON config file. For example,
you can set the color of tabs when it's active and when it's not active. Also
the background color of the tab row, again for when it's active or not.
And you can set it for whether UI elements like the settings and other stuff use the
light or dark Windows theme. So that'll be even cooler when they flesh that out
more. And as a general final note, across all these updates, they added many more
settings that I didn't talk about. So again, you'll want to just look through the settings.
It's simple enough to see what these do. And you might find one you want to
change. Though if you do want to see all the new features for everything,
or at least skim through them, Microsoft does make a new blog post for every new version.
So what I'll do is put links to all of those blog posts in the description, all 16 of them.
So if you want, you can literally just go through and quickly scan
all the features for every new version. So that should pretty much get you up to
speed. Maybe I'll do one of these types of videos every year or so,
or maybe also if there's some game-changing feature that's worth making a video about.
Also let me know down in the comments if you think I missed a major feature that
I should have mentioned. If you enjoyed the video,
of course give it a thumbs up. Maybe check out some other recent videos on my channel,
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These days, YouTube might not even show you the new videos, even if you do subscribe. If
you want to keep watching the next video, I'd recommend is where I talked about the biggest
new features in the latest major Windows 11 update. There's a lot of stuff added in that,
the new 2022 update. So I'll put that link right there you can click on.
So thanks so much for watching guys, and I'll see you in the next one.