Windows Terminal replaced the separate, isolated Command Prompt and PowerShell windows as the default terminal in Windows 11. The key improvements: tabs, profiles (multiple shell environments in one window), GPU-accelerated text rendering, Unicode and emoji support, customisable appearance, and a pane-splitting feature for running shells side-by-side. For anyone who uses the command line regularly — developers, IT professionals, power users — it’s a significant quality-of-life improvement over the older terminals. This fits into the wider topic we cover in our Windows 11.
Opening Windows Terminal
Win+X → Terminal (opens the default profile — usually PowerShell). Or: Win+X → Terminal (Admin) for an elevated session. Or: Win+S → “Terminal.” The first tab that opens depends on the configured default profile.
Quick tab shortcuts: Ctrl+Shift+T opens a new tab with the default profile. The dropdown arrow (⌄) next to the tab bar opens other profiles. Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab cycle through open tabs.
Profiles — the core concept
Windows Terminal uses “profiles” — named configurations that each launch a different shell. Default profiles: Windows PowerShell, Command Prompt, and any installed WSL distributions. Each profile has its own settings: shell, starting directory, font, colour scheme, cursor style, and background image.
Access profile settings: Terminal Settings → Profiles → click any profile → see all configurable options. Creating a new profile: Settings → Add a new profile → configure as needed. Common uses for custom profiles:
- A profile that opens in a specific project directory (set “Starting directory” to the project folder)
- A profile that runs SSH to a remote server automatically on open (set “Command line” to
ssh user@server) - A high-contrast colour scheme for visibility, separate from the default profile
- An Azure Cloud Shell profile (available as a default option)
Panes — multiple shells side by side
Alt+Shift+Plus splits the current pane vertically (new pane on the right). Alt+Shift+Minus splits horizontally (new pane below). Alt+Shift+arrows navigates between panes. This lets you run two shell sessions simultaneously in one window — common scenarios:
- Running a development server in one pane while using another for file operations
- Watching logs in one pane while running commands in another
- Comparing output from two different commands simultaneously
- Editing a file in WSL (left pane) while running tests in PowerShell (right pane)
Close a pane: type exit or Ctrl+Shift+W. A layout with multiple panes is called a “pane arrangement” — you can save arrangements as named layouts in settings for consistent setups.
Customisation — appearance settings
Settings → Appearance → configure globally: colour scheme, font family and size, transparency, background acrylic effect (translucent background showing content behind the terminal window), and whether the title bar is hidden (for a cleaner look).
Per-profile appearance overrides the global settings for that specific profile. The built-in colour schemes include: Campbell (default), Solarized Dark, Solarized Light, One Half Dark, Tango Dark, and others. Additional colour schemes can be imported — the community maintains large libraries of Terminal colour scheme JSON at sites like windowsterminalthemes.dev.
Font: Cascadia Code is the default and was designed specifically for terminal use, including programming ligatures (→ renders as a proper arrow glyph, != as ≠, etc.). Cascadia Mono is the same without ligatures. Any installed monospace font works — JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, and Hack are popular alternatives with their own approaches to programming ligatures and readability.
Settings.json — direct configuration
Windows Terminal stores all settings in a JSON file. Settings → Open JSON file → the raw configuration. Power users often prefer editing JSON directly over using the settings UI because it’s faster for bulk changes and allows copying configurations between machines.
The JSON format is documented and version-controlled. Common JSON customisations not exposed in the UI: custom key bindings for specific commands, advanced profile configurations, and startup layouts. The settings file can be committed to a Git repository for syncing Terminal configuration across multiple machines — a common developer practice.
Our guide on WSL on Windows 11 covers integrating Linux distributions with Windows Terminal, and our guide on Windows 11 keyboard shortcuts covers system-wide shortcuts that complement Terminal’s own keyboard configuration. For Windows Terminal’s full documentation including all profile settings, key binding syntax, and colour scheme format, Microsoft’s Windows Terminal documentation is comprehensive and kept current with new releases.
Key bindings
Windows Terminal’s keyboard shortcuts are configurable. Default shortcuts:
| Shortcut | Action |
| Ctrl+Shift+T | New tab (default profile) |
| Ctrl+Shift+N | New window |
| Ctrl+Shift+W | Close tab or pane |
| Ctrl+Tab | Next tab |
| Ctrl+Shift+Tab | Previous tab |
| Ctrl+Shift+[1-9] | Open tab with profile N |
| Alt+Shift+Plus | Split pane vertically |
| Alt+Shift+Minus | Split pane horizontally |
| Ctrl+Shift+P | Command Palette |
| Ctrl+Plus / Ctrl+Minus | Zoom in / out |
| Ctrl+Shift+C / V | Copy / Paste (replaces Ctrl+C/V which sends signals in terminals) |
| Alt+arrow | Move between panes |
Command Palette
Ctrl+Shift+P opens the Command Palette — a searchable list of all Windows Terminal commands. Type to filter: “split” shows pane-splitting commands; “colour” shows colour scheme-related commands; “duplicate” duplicates the current tab. The Command Palette is the fastest way to discover and use Terminal features you haven’t memorised a shortcut for.
Quake mode
A hidden Windows Terminal feature: Quake mode. A Terminal window set to Quake mode drops down from the top of the screen when a hotkey is pressed, covering roughly half the screen, and slides back up when dismissed. Configure in settings.json: assign a global hotkey (Win+backtick is common). Quake mode provides instant access to a Terminal without opening a new window or managing taskbar windows — it appears over the current application and dismisses cleanly. Useful for quick command execution without disrupting the current workflow.
Windows Terminal vs Windows PowerShell vs Command Prompt
To be clear about what Windows Terminal is and isn’t: it’s the container application, not the shell itself. The actual command-line interpreters (PowerShell, Command Prompt, bash in WSL) run inside Terminal’s tabs and panes. Terminal provides the visual interface, tabs, panes, and configuration; the shell provides the commands and scripting capabilities.
PowerShell is the default and recommended shell for Windows administration and scripting — it’s more capable than CMD. CMD (Command Prompt) exists for compatibility with older batch scripts. WSL distributions provide bash and Linux tools. Terminal lets you run all of them simultaneously in one organised window, rather than juggling separate application windows.
Windows Terminal is the most significant improvement to the Windows command-line experience in a long time — tabbed terminals, configurable profiles, side-by-side panes, and a modern appearance that doesn’t feel like a relic from the 1990s. For anyone who uses the command line more than occasionally: installing Windows Terminal (or confirming it’s already the default on Windows 11) and spending 30 minutes configuring profiles and colour schemes pays dividends in daily usability that a one-time setup cost easily justifies.
Startup configuration
Settings → Startup controls what happens when Terminal opens: which profile is the default, whether Terminal restores tabs from the previous session, and whether it launches on Windows startup. “Launch on machine startup” adds Terminal to startup programs — useful for developers who immediately open Terminal when they start working. “On startup, open” → “Restore last closed tabs” reopens the exact tabs and panes from the previous session.
The startup directory setting per profile determines where each new shell session begins. For project-specific work: creating a profile with the project directory as the starting directory means every new tab in that profile opens already in the right location. Combined with session restoration, this makes returning to a development context seamless — open Terminal and all your shells are where you left them.
Scrollback buffer
Settings → Profiles → select a profile → “Advanced” tab → “History size” (scrollback buffer). Default is 9001 lines. For long-running commands that produce extensive output (log files, build output, test results): increasing this to 30000 or more ensures you can scroll back through the full output without losing earlier lines.
Ctrl+Shift+F opens a search bar within the Terminal window — searches through the visible and scrollback buffer content. Useful for finding specific output from earlier in the session without manually scrolling up through thousands of lines. The search is incremental and highlights matches throughout the buffer.
Windows Terminal for SSH
Terminal makes SSH connections more comfortable than older CMD or PowerShell windows. Create a profile specifically for an SSH target: Settings → Add a new profile → Command line field → enter ssh username@hostname. Opening this profile immediately connects to the server. Combine with SSH key authentication (so no password prompt) for a one-click connection to frequently-accessed servers.
Multiple SSH connections in separate tabs or panes — all within one Terminal window — is considerably cleaner than maintaining multiple PuTTY or cmd.exe windows. For sysadmins managing multiple servers: a Terminal window with tabs for each server, plus a local PowerShell tab for Windows administration, consolidates the entire remote management workflow in one organised interface.
iTerm2 vs Windows Terminal — for users coming from macOS
macOS developers who use iTerm2 will find Windows Terminal familiar in its approach — both offer profiles, tabs, panes, and extensive customisation. Feature parity is reasonable: Windows Terminal has panes, custom key bindings, colour schemes, font configuration, and an equivalent to iTerm2’s window arrangements. Where iTerm2 has more: AppleScript integration, more mature trigger automation, and a longer track record of plugin ecosystem. Where Terminal has more: native integration with Windows, WSL distributions appearing as first-class profiles, and PowerShell access alongside Linux shells.
For macOS developers moving to Windows: Windows Terminal makes the transition for command-line workflows considerably smoother than the older CMD and PowerShell windows would suggest. The gap between the two platforms’ terminal experiences has narrowed substantially, and what gap remains is addressable with configuration rather than fundamentally different capability.
Windows Terminal is, by a significant margin, the most capable terminal application available for Windows without additional installation cost. It ships with Windows 11 (or is a free Store update), receives regular updates with new features, and covers the full range of command-line environments from PowerShell to bash via WSL to remote SSH sessions — all in a modern, customisable interface. For anyone who dismissed Windows’ command-line tooling based on the legacy CMD experience: Terminal represents a genuinely different and considerably better option.
Windows Terminal update and the Microsoft Store
Windows Terminal is distributed through the Microsoft Store and updates automatically. The version that shipped with Windows 11’s initial release was functional but lacked some features added in subsequent updates (Quake mode, improved settings UI, additional colour schemes). Running winget upgrade Microsoft.WindowsTerminal from any terminal (including the older cmd.exe if Terminal isn’t yet installed) updates to the current version.
Check current version: Terminal → Help → About, or Settings → About. The GitHub repository (github.com/microsoft/terminal) shows the changelog for all releases, making it easy to identify when a specific feature was added. If a feature described here isn’t available in your Terminal: checking the version and updating often resolves it. You might also run into Windows 11 PowerShell for Beginners.
Useful PowerShell features when running in Terminal
PowerShell running inside Windows Terminal benefits from several features that weren’t available in the older PowerShell window:
- Properly rendered ANSI colour codes — PowerShell module output, git status, and other colour-coded output displays correctly
- Unicode characters render correctly — emoji in commit messages, international characters in filenames, special symbols in output all display as intended
- Tab completion with Oh My Posh: install Oh My Posh (a PowerShell prompt theme engine, similar to Oh My Zsh for bash) for a rich, informative prompt showing git status, current directory, Python environment, Node version, and more directly in the prompt line. Installation:
winget install JanDeDobbeleer.OhMyPosh→ configure a theme in PowerShell profile
The combination of Windows Terminal’s visual capabilities and a well-configured PowerShell profile (with Oh My Posh, posh-git for git integration, and PSReadLine for better history and autocomplete) produces a command-line experience that competes with carefully-configured bash/zsh setups on Linux and macOS. This level of configuration takes an hour or two to set up; the payoff is a terminal environment that feels modern and informative for the lifetime of the machine. Related: Windows 11 Computer Management.
One final note on Terminal for users new to the command line: the transition from a GUI-only workflow to one that includes Terminal is rarely as steep as it appears. Starting with Windows Terminal — rather than the older CMD window — means the starting point is more capable and more usable. The tabs and profiles mean you can have a PowerShell session, a CMD window for a specific legacy script, and a WSL bash session all open simultaneously and organised. That’s a more comfortable environment for learning than a single undifferentiated CMD window, and it grows naturally as command-line use deepens. If this sounds familiar, Windows 11 Group Policy Editor is worth a look.
