Windows Terminal update: new windowing, UI, fonts, and VT improvements

Microsoft’s terminal for Windows just took a major step forward: a sweeping update that rewrites the app’s windowing model, brings dozens of previously hidden settings into the UI, ships updated fonts and color schemes, and delivers a raft of stability, compatibility, and usability improvements that matter to developers, system administrators, and power users alike.

Background​

Windows Terminal has matured from an enthusiast project into the primary command-line experience on modern Windows. Over the past several years the app has moved from preview to production, adopted a rapid cadence of preview and stable releases, and absorbed a wide range of features—tabs, panes, custom profiles, GPU-accelerated rendering, and advanced VT (virtual terminal) support—that position it as one of the most capable terminal emulators on Windows.
This latest update is part of a release cycle that began with preview builds earlier in the year and culminated in a general rollout later in the summer. The release series for this cycle introduced the most consequential architectural change in the app’s history: a full rework of how Terminal manages windows and processes. That work is accompanied by an extensive set of UI improvements and new user-facing settings that make customization and compatibility easier than ever.

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What changed — at a glance​

• A new windowing architecture that replaces the prior multi-process, monarch/peasant-style orchestration with a more robust approach focused on reliability, foreground rights handling, and consistent tray behavior.
• Settings UI expansion: dozens of settings that were previously JSON-only are now visible in the Settings UI, including bell sounds, compatibility flags, cell width, color overrides, and a visual padding editor.
• New UI for the New Tab menu, plus support for custom icons and nested folders in the New Tab menu structure.
• New profile and path translation features, including drag-and-drop path style translation for WSL, MSYS2, and Cygwin.
• New font and color additions, notably an update to Cascadia Code and a trial color scheme based on the Oklab color space.
• Improved VT and console behavior, including support for additional control sequences and better handling of Sixel graphics and clipboard-related OSCs.
• Usability and accessibility improvements, such as the ability to display the tab bar in full-screen, improved high-contrast support, and better screen-reader behavior in Settings UI previews.

Each of these changes is important on its own; combined, they reshape the Terminal experience into something significantly more polished and administrable.

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Deep dive: the new windowing architecture​

What changed technically​

The team replaced the older window-management pattern with a rewritten windowing layer designed to be more reliable and consistent. The earlier design used a coordination pattern between processes that could result in flaky interactions—tray icon inconsistencies, windows not responding to remote-control commands, and fragility around multi-window actions. The new architecture simplifies and centralizes many of those responsibilities.
Key improvements delivered by the new model:

• More reliable tray icon behavior: the system tray icon now reflects running windows and actions more consistently, reducing cases where the icon and actual windows fall out of sync.
• Improved multi-window actions and "summoning": remote control commands (for example, launching or targeting a specific window from the command line) behave more predictably; features that mimic a Quake-style “summon” window are more reliable.
• Better foreground-rights handling: windows that are activated remotely are properly granted foreground activation permission in more scenarios, addressing previous cases where windows would not surface as intended.
• Reduced race conditions and process-management regressions: numerous fixes aim to eliminate timing-sensitive failures where input or focus could be lost when multiple windows interacted.

Why it matters​

For anyone who runs multiple terminal windows, uses scripted or remote control of Terminal instances (for example with wt.exe), or relies on the tray icon and remote “bring to front” behaviors in workflows or automation, this rewrite addresses long-standing pain points. The end result should be fewer mysterious behaviors and improved integration with window-management tooling and scripts.

Trade-offs and risk​

A rewrite of core windowing logic is inherently risky: changes to threading, event dispatch, or inter-process coordination can expose regressions in edge cases—especially when third-party tools interact with Terminal via console APIs. The release notes and servicing cadence indicate the team was deliberate about stability (backporting hundreds of fixes), but administrators and power users should still test critical automation and integrations after upgrading.

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UI and customization: settings come out of the JSON closet​

One of the most immediately visible improvements is the expanded Settings UI. Historically, many granular Terminal settings were available only via the JSON configuration file. This update brings dozens of those options into the graphical Settings UI, lowering the barrier to customization.
Notable UI changes and new settings:

• New Tab menu revamp: full UI for editing the New Tab dropdown, including nested folders, custom icons, and profile matchers. The New Tab UI is now a legitimate customization surface rather than something you “hack” in JSON.
• Compatibility page: a top-level compatibility section now exposes flags that previously required manual JSON edits, including options to allow background operation and debugging toggles to help with application compatibility.
• Appearance and profile-level overrides: profile-specific foreground/background overrides, explicit cell width (for monospaced layout tuning), and a spatial padding editor that allows visual control of left/right/top/bottom padding.
• Icon picker and emoji support: choosing profile icons is now easier with an icon picker that supports built-in glyphs, emoji, or file-based icons.
• Bell sounds: configurable bell sounds are now accessible via the UI, including the ability to set, play, and remove bell audio.
• A setting to show the tab bar in full-screen windows: boolean flag to control whether tabs remain visible when a Terminal window is full-screen.
• Path translation on drag/drop: a profile-level setting allows path translation modes (Windows style, WSL /mnt/c, MSYS2 /c, or Cygwin /cygdrive/c), making drag-and-drop into WSL sessions far less error-prone.

The overall effect: customization is faster and less error-prone, which benefits casual users and admins alike.

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Terminal emulation, VT, and console-level updates​

This release continues Terminal’s steady progress toward a highly compatible and fully-featured VT implementation.
Highlights:

• New control sequence support: additional support for sequences like DTTERM window manipulation (CSI t) in constrained cases, and VT resets (RIS), S8C1T and S7C1T handling.
• OSC reset sequences: VT applications can now reset palette, foreground, background, cursor, and selection colors via OSCs (104, 110, 111, 112, and 117 in supported scenarios).
• Copy with control sequences: new copy action option to include ANSI escape sequences in copied content, useful when copying styled terminal output to other tools that can interpret escapes.
• Sixel handling and scaling improvements: Sixel support continues to evolve with scaling changes that aim to produce visually nicer results but may affect how existing Sixel-based tools display images.

Security-relevant VT behavior:

• OSC 52 clipboard controls: Terminal exposes settings to control whether OSC 52 (a VT mechanism to write to the clipboard) is allowed. This is now surfaced as a compatibility setting, giving administrators the ability to disallow clipboard writes from terminal apps—an important mitigation against inadvertent or malicious clipboard exfiltration.

These improvements make Terminal a stronger host for complex text-based apps, editors, and terminal-UIs, while also giving admins tools to control potentially risky behaviors.

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Fonts, color schemes, and accessibility​

Design and legibility are also part of the update:

• Cascadia Code update: the bundled font receives a point release that addresses typographic hinting issues on certain glyphs (notably right-to-left/Arabic glyph hinting).
• “Ottosson” color scheme: an experimental color scheme designed using the Oklab color space is included as a pilot, intended to provide more perceptually uniform and pleasant hues.
• Accessibility fixes: improved screen-reader behavior for UI previews and better high-contrast support across palettes and the Settings UI.

These are small but meaningful gains for readability and visual comfort—areas often overlooked in developer tooling.

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Enterprise and deployment considerations​

The update does more than add user-facing polish; it also adds enterprise-friendly controls and hardening:

• Group Policy support: Group Policy templates are now provided to help configure Terminal as the default terminal experience in managed environments.
• Hardening for icon sources: HTTP icon sources have been disabled to reduce exposure to untrusted networks, and file path validation was made more robust—both moves aimed at tightening security posture.
• Backports and servicing: many fixes from preview were backported to the stable branch and to servicing releases, signaling a conservative approach to production readiness.
• Portable and unpackaged builds: language override and portable build tweaks make it easier to deploy Terminal in environments where store-based installation is impractical.

For administrators, the presence of Group Policy templates and control over dangerous VT behaviors (like OSC 52) are critical. The new settings reduce the need for ad-hoc registry hacks or bespoke configuration management to govern Terminal behavior.

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Benefits for different user classes​

Developers and power users​

• Stability: fewer flakey window-management problems means smoother workflows and better terminal automation.
• Customization without JSON: quick access to previously opaque settings makes it faster to tune Terminal for daily work.
• Improved VT compatibility: better support for control sequences and improved Sixel handling makes Terminal friendlier to rich text tools and terminal UIs.

System administrators and enterprise IT​

• Group Policy templates: easier mass-configuration and default terminal enforcement across fleets.
• Security controls: the ability to disable OSC 52 and block HTTP-based icon sources reduces attack surface.
• Portable/unpackaged improvements: simpler deployment models for locked-down environments.

Casual users​

• More discoverable features: visuals and Settings UI improvements reduce friction for people who are not comfortable editing JSON.
• A more predictable UI: tray and window fixes reduce confusion for users who rely on visual state.

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Known caveats, risks, and the upgrade checklist​

No major platform rewrite ships without trade-offs. The release includes explicit warnings about potential regressions, and the team advised users to file issues if they encounter windowing or process-management problems. Administrators and heavy users should proceed deliberately.
Upgrade checklist (recommended):

• Test critical scripts that target Terminal windows (wt.exe commands, remote-control scripts) in a staging environment before rolling out broadly.
• Validate integrations with IDEs and build tools that may spawn Terminal windows (Visual Studio, VS Code tasks, etc.)—watch for focus/foreground discrepancies.
• Evaluate OSC 52 exposure: if policies forbid clipboard writes from terminal apps, ensure the compatibility setting is enforced.
• Check custom icon usage and backgrounds—icon validation was hardened and HTTP sources disabled; scripts or tools that relied on remote icons may need updating.
• If relying on Sixel imagery or specialized VT behaviors, run visual regression tests; Sixel scaling changes can alter layout or appearance.

Flagged risks and edge cases:

• Some third-party console utilities or older apps that assumed the previous windowing behavior could behave differently; backwards incompatibility is possible in rare cases.
• Any change to threading or event dispatch could uncover race conditions in tightly synchronized automation; the team has patched many issues, but environment-specific regressions may remain.
• If an environment depends on the removed startOnUserLogin JSON key, administrators must reconfigure via the Settings UI or rely on OS-level autostart mechanisms.

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How to get the update​

• Update via the Microsoft Store to receive the stable release channel. Store updates are the simplest approach for most users and keep Terminal integrated with OS update semantics.
• For earlier access or to try experimental features, download preview or canary builds distributed by the team (unpackaged builds are available for portable use).
• Portable/unpackaged versions now expose language override and other settings that facilitate deployment on restricted systems.

Practical steps:

• Open the Microsoft Store and check for app updates to receive the stable channel package.
• If you prefer the bleeding edge, obtain the preview/canary package and test in a controlled environment.
• For portable deployment, use the unpackaged archive and install it to a managed location with proper permissions.

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Critical evaluation — strengths and where to watch closely​

Strengths

• Structural improvement: the windowing rewrite addresses long-standing reliability problems. That’s a major win for users who run many windows or who rely on scripted control.
• UX modernization: bringing obscure JSON options into the UI removes friction and reduces configuration errors.
• Security-aware changes: disabling HTTP icons, surfacing OSC controls, and providing Group Policy templates show a thoughtful attention to enterprise needs.
• Ongoing VT investment: additional control sequence support and Sixel improvements make Terminal a competitive cross-platform-grade emulator.

Where to watch closely

• Regression risk after architectural changes: rewrites of core windowing logic can cause subtle regressions in niche workflows. Test automation and interop tooling carefully.
• Sixel and VT compatibility: while the Sixel rendering is improving, changes to scaling may require tweaks for scripts and tools that expect previous behavior.
• Third-party integration assumptions: Visual Studio and other large tools sometimes make assumptions about console behavior; verify those integrations remain intact after update.
• Feature rollout timing: some changes were introduced first in preview and only gradually promoted; administrators should track the team’s servicing notes to understand which fixes have been backported.

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The final take​

This release represents a maturation point for Windows Terminal: an architectural rewrite that targets reliability, a more approachable Settings UI, and substantive console and compatibility improvements. For power users, developers, and IT professionals, the changes reduce friction and expand control without compromising the flexibility that made Terminal popular.
The recommended approach is pragmatic: adopt the update after validating critical workflows, leverage the new UI to simplify configuration, and lock down clipboard behavior where security policy requires it. The update’s combination of usability, administration, and technical upgrades helps cement Windows Terminal as the go-to terminal on Windows, while the cautious, incremental rollout underscores the team’s emphasis on stability.
For anyone who manages Windows environments or depends on terminal workflows, this release is worth planning for—test early, roll forward deliberately, and expect a more reliable, more configurable terminal experience once you do.

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Source: Neowin Windows Terminal gets massive update with a new windowing architecture and a lot more