Windows Is Giving the Command Line a Makeover

The command line is about to get a little prettier and a lot more personal. Today, at Microsoft’s Build conference here in Seattle, the company announced Windows Terminal, a command line tool with new features and personalization options. It will arrive in mid-June.

The program will have multiple tabs, themes and customization choices. It will utilize different fonts and emojis and offer GPU-accelerated text rendering as well. Themes can be applied to different tabs, should you want to color code per workspace. There will also be a category for extensions to create a group of add-ons.

Microsoft said the Terminal will make command line better on Windows with an environment for those who utilize “PowerShell, Cmd, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and all forms of command-line application.”

I’ve been told that Windows Terminal will not immediately replace the existing Command Prompt (Microsoft wants to ensure users aren’t left without compatibility), but that Microsoft is looking into ways to make Terminal the default app.

Microsoft is also announcing Microsoft Windows Sybsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) and introduced a Linux kernel within Windows that should be available in tests this summer.