Windows Terminal Preview v1.14.143 comes up with a plethora of bug fixes and improvements to both Windows 10 and 11. This version of Terminal is issued in two bundles compatible with Windows 10-11 and the other with Windows 11. The Windows 11 version is much smaller because you no longer need to work around a platform issue related to dependencies.
If you are looking to use Terminal as an unpackaged app, i.e. extracting the msix file–we recommend that
you use the Win10 bundle. You will need the Visual C++ runtime redistributable. In addition, if you install the packaged version on either Windows 10 or Windows 11, it now depends on the Visual C++ Universal Runtime Package. Despite these distributions having different version numbers, they are built from the same code and there is no the functional difference between them. If you install the Windows 10 version on Windows 11, it will probably automatically upgrade itself to the Windows 11
version. It turns out that it is impossible to have two bundles with the same version number, so it has to be this
way.
Table of Contents
Windows Terminal Preview v1.14.143
Here is the changelog –
Features
- Windows Terminal now has better support for the xterm “Alternate Screen Buffer”, and can now handle alternate scroll mode and resize/reflow better.
- Through windowed apps from the terminal should work far better now
- ConPTY can now handle show/hide window calls and even knows who the window owner is.
- Windows created by console applications appear above the terminal.
- Focus events are now sent through VT input.
- You can now use the experimental.useBackgroundImageForWindow (bool, default false) global setting to apply one background image for your entire window!
- You are now able to select all the text in the buffer using the selectAll action. This is bound by default to ctrl+shift+a.
Changes
UI
- @dansmor7 comes up with visual changes to the caption buttons, settings UI, scrollbar, new tab button, color picker, command palette, and tabs, search box to move us closer to the Windows 11 design language. Really just about any WinUI surface we have, it’s been polished up!
- RadioButtons in the settings UI have been replaced with ComboBoxes. This gives an added bonus to keyboard and screen reader users and makes it easier to navigate through and change these settings.
Interactivity
- The IME input mode now defaults to English when interacting with Windows Terminal.
- The terminal is now aware of toggled state for Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, and Num Lock.
Settings
- There’s now a VERY EXPERIMENTAL new VT passthrough mode setting that makes ConPTY do minimal translations and may make your terminal a little faster ?? and a lot more broken!
- Use the experimental.connection.passthrough mode (bool, default true) profile setting and it should be set on the profile’s next launch
- ?? WARNING ?? This seems to mostly work with CMD and WSL. PowerShell is mostly sad ?.
- The trimBlockSelection global setting defaults to true.
- Terminal now ignores newTab actions with a profile index greater than the number of profiles.
Atlas Renderer Improvements
- ClearType is no longer always enabled.
- The grayscale blending shader should now be working properly.
- OpenConsole’s leak check report should be fixed.
- The shader power draw was reduced using explicit branching.
- The renderer is now smarter about when to resize the buffer when scrolling.
Documentation
- GitHub repo supports rich code navigation. Bug reports are also automatically tagged as bugs.
- We’ve uploaded specs for Theme-controlled color scheme switching and Default Terminal.
- The README has been updated to mention the required .NET Targeting Pack.
- Words are hard! The developers make sure they use the right words and grammar across their repo.
- bell sound is now in the schema.
Bug Fixes
- Terminal should be able to find Cascadia Mono… Third time’s the charm.
- command-line in profile.defaults should no longer override the command lines of profiles that state powershell.exe or cmd.exe.
- Solve a memory leak in the onecore interactivity.
- We should be maintaining the virtual viewport bottom properly.
- Screen readers can now read some settings in the User Interface better.
- Substitute acrylic with acrylic material for localization purposes.
- The close tab button color now matches the tab text color.
Reliability
- Fix a crash when deleting the last profile in the settings User Interface.
- Fix resize crash in OpenConsole when using the Atlas Renderer.
Code health and Maintainability
- James unified the terminal and console VT handlers, deleting thousands of lines of redundant code in the process!
- Windows Terminal Preview v1.14.143 Added some missing breaks to cases in IslandWindow.
- Added the MIT license for a few files that were missing it.
- Replaced size with ARRAYSIZE in SystemConfigurationProvider.
- Use type inference throughout the project.
- Utilize memcmp for TextAttribute & TextColor comparison.
Windows Terminal Preview v1.14.143 Download link.
That’s all!!