Windows Terminal Preview 1909

Kayla

September 24th, 2019

Welcome back to another release of the Windows Terminal! We have switched to the Windows version syntax, so this is the September 2019 release (1909). As always, you can download the latest release of the Terminal from the Microsoft Store or from the GitHub releases page.

Cascadia Code

Cascadia Code is finally here! Cascadia Code is the new monospaced font developed alongside the Terminal. Cascadia Code version 1909.16 is packaged inside this version of the Terminal and will automatically install on download. You can also download it from its GitHub releases page. Cascadia Code is open source and we are welcoming all contributions!

Settings Schema

The Terminal now has a settings schema! The settings schema will provide auto-fill suggestions when editing your profiles.json file and it will also provide definitions of each property. Reference to this schema is automatically included in this release, so you should see it take effect right away!

Stylus Selection Support

You can now use a stylus to make a selection inside the Terminal! The Terminal treats the stylus like a mouse and will always select text when dragging over the Terminal window.

CloseWindow Functionality

"closeWindow" is a new key binding option for the Terminal. When invoked, it will close your window and if you have multiple tabs open, it will show you a warning/prompt before exiting. It’ll be bound to Alt+F4 by default. 😊

👉 Note: This functionality does not yet exist when clicking the close button. This is only invoked when using the key binding. Clicking the close button will close all of your tabs without displaying a warning message.

Clipboard Copy Bug Fixes

There was a bug that was introduced in Terminal v0.4 where it would sometimes crash when copying. That bug has been fixed in this version – if something fails to be added to the clipboard, the Terminal won’t crash. 😁 Additionally, copying text from the Terminal will now respect newline characters!

20H1 Bug Extermination

Our team owns both the Windows Terminal and the original conhost that ships within Windows. This means we also have to maintain conhost and work with the Windows development cycle. Much of the last month has been dedicated to fixing bugs within conhost that will be shipping in Windows 20H1. Some of these bug fixes include:

🐛 When copying text with HTML tags (<>), they are now rendered properly.

🐛 Properly copying the background color when using HTML copy.

🐛 More robustly handling scrolling regions and attributes from VT applications.

🐛 General code health and conhost reliability improvements.

Release Cycle and v1.0 Roadmap

We are happy to share with you the release cycle we plan to maintain for the Windows Terminal. Our regular release cadence will be once every four weeks. These four weeks include two weeks of feature development, one week of quality and stability work, and one week of release preparation.

We plan to have v1.0 of the Terminal feature complete by the end of 2019. From there, we plan to take a few months to fix bugs, improve quality, and ensure stability. We are aiming to release Windows Terminal v1.0 in April 2020. In addition to the roadmap, we have full documentation of all of the features planned for v1.0 on GitHub.

Top Contributors

We are continually grateful for the contributions our community has made to the Terminal and we would like to thank and recognize those who have especially made an impact.

Contributors Who Opened the Most Non-Duplicate Issues

🏆 j4james

🏆 mikemaccana

🏆 martin389

Contributors Who Created the Most Merged Pull Requests

🏆 martin389

🏆 j4james

🏆 mcpiroman

🏆 dlong11

🏆 mauve

🏆 codendone

Until Next Time

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to Kayla (@cinnamon_msft) or Rich (@richturn_ms) on Twitter! We always appreciate contributions on GitHub and we’re eager to see how you like version 1909!