Microsoft Releases First Preview Of Windows Terminal

In addition to the recent preview of Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2), Microsoft also kept to their word from the Build 2019 conference of issuing their first preview of "Windows Terminal" in June. The first of several preview releases of Windows Terminal is now available from the Microsoft Store.

Windows Terminal announced back at Build 2019 in May is a Linux inspired terminal for Windows 10. The Windows Terminal adds support for tabs, user customizations, and even support for emoji. It's a really major rework to enhance the experience compared to what is presently available with Command Prompt or PowerShell and really aims to inch it closer to feature parity with the many Linux terminal emulators.

In this first Windows Terminal preview release there are accessibility improvements in supporting assistive technologies, many settings for allowing the user to customize their terminal experience, support for custom key bindings, the ability to set arbitrary images as the background, and other features.

Microsoft intends to issue several preview releases over the months ahead while they aim for the official Windows Terminal 1.0 release around the end of the calendar year.

More details on Windows Terminal via this blog post. Windows Terminal is open-source on GitHub.