Change Default Terminal Windows 10
Hilke Mcnally
If you don't have access to the Microsoft Store, the builds are published on the GitHub releases page. If you install from GitHub, Windows Terminal will not automatically update with new versions. For additional installation options using a package manager (winget, chocolatey, scoop), see the Windows Terminal product repo.
You can invoke most features of Windows Terminal through the command palette. The default key combination to invoke it is Ctrl+Shift+P. You can also open it using the Command palette button in the dropdown menu.
To customize the settings of your Windows Terminal, select Settings in the dropdown menu. This will open the settings UI to configure your settings. You can learn how to open the settings UI with keyboard shortcuts on the Actions page.
Select Settings in the Windows Terminal dropdown menu while holding Shift to open the settings.json file in your default text editor. (The default text editor is defined in your Windows settings.)
You can launch the terminal in a specific configuration using command line arguments. These arguments let you open the terminal with specific tabs and panes with custom profile settings. Learn more about command line arguments on the Command line arguments page.
If you encounter any difficulties using the terminal, reference the Troubleshooting page. If you find any bugs or have a feature request, you can select the feedback link in the About menu of the terminal to go to the GitHub page where you can file a new issue.
A default terminal is the terminal emulator that launches by default when opening a command line application. Starting from the dawn of Windows, the default terminal emulator has always been the Windows Console Host, conhost.exe. This means that shells such as Command Prompt and PowerShell have always opened inside the Windows Console Host.
For a long time, users have not been easily able to replace the console host. There were definitely third parties who hooked the OS to make it possible, but it was never truly supported. Now, we are opening up the functionality to allow for other terminals to be set as default, including Windows Terminal.
Over the course of 2022, we are planning to make Windows Terminal the default experience on Windows 11 devices. We will start with the Windows Insider Program and start moving through rings until we reach everyone on Windows 11. We would love to have your feedback while we are working on this to help iron out all of the bugs and ensure everyone has a great experience with Terminal. ? You can always file issues and feature requests on our GitHub.
If you want to undo the above changes later, simply repeat the above steps and select Windows console host or Let Windows decide in the Default terminal application drop-down menu.
If you have set Windows Terminal as your default terminal app for Command Prompt and PowerShell, now is a good time to learn some Windows Terminal tips, tricks, and shortcuts to improve your experience.
The default terminal emulator has always been the Windows Console Host (conhost.exe). This means that shells such as Command Prompt and PowerShell have always opened inside the Windows Console Host. Now, this will be changed to Windows Terminal soon.
Microsoft continually works to improve the settings UI experience. The Windows Terminal is a modern, fast, efficient, powerful, and productive terminal application for users of command-line tools.
According to Microsoft, Windows Terminal is a modern terminal application for users of command-line tools and shells like Command Prompt, PowerShell, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Its main features include
You can change the Windows Terminal as Default Terminal Application from this Terminal application itself. Check out the following steps to make this Terminal the default terminal application.
Windows Terminal comes with a search feature that allows you to look through the text buffer for a specific keyword. This is useful when finding a command you had run before or for a particular file name.
It is now possible to change Default Terminal Application in Windows 10. The appropriate option is available starting in build 21390 and Windows Terminal 1.9, which can now be set as the default host for console apps in Windows.
The default console host is the application that handles execution of any command line application such as PowerShell, command prompt, etc. They will work inside the specified terminal emulator session by default.
However, if you select Windows Console Host, this will restore the classic behavior of Windows, and you will have PowerShell, command prompt, WSL, and other console apps running in their own PowerShell and command prompt window.
This post will show you how to change the default terminal app to Windows Console Host or Windows Terminal on Windows 10. This can be done either in command prompt properties or in Windows Terminal settings.
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Windows Terminal app opens in a tabbed view by default --- much like a browser does --- to help you manage several command-line windows at once. You can run multiple instances of PowerShell and Command Prompt (CMD) in separate tabs if you want.
Switching to the Windows Terminal app gives you access to other features like themes, emoji support, multiple sessions, split panes, GPU rendering, and many other customizations. Such features probably won't make it to the Windows Console.
You need to download and install the Windows Terminal app if you don't have it on your computer already. Windows 11 should automatically make Windows Terminal the default terminal application when it is installed, but if it doesn't, you can change it manually.
That's it. After this, whenever you open the Command Prompt or PowerShell, Windows will run the Windows Terminal app. The Windows Terminal app isn't just a functional upgrade over the old Console Host --- you can customize how it looks, too.
Look, I am not mad at you or have any personal reasons to be that. It is just the rational fact that I cannot reproduce your issue, and in that case I cannot blame the distribution for that, plus the fact that sway or i3 is not made to please absolute newbies.
I would advise you to start over. Backup your sway configs in $HOME and copy the default ones from /etc/skel again. Then apply your changes step by step (reload after every change) and discover what configuration could cause your issue.
In general, It is not a good practice to sudo arround your system and play with global configurations.
Everything you need for customization should be in your home directory.
A good practice to see what is wrong is make a new user and start from scratch.
Terminal profiles are platform-specific shell configurations comprised of an executable path, arguments, and other customizations. By default several profiles are automatically detected which can be customized or added to.
To create a new profile, run the Terminal: Select Default Profile command and activate the configure button on the right side of the shell to base it on. This will add a new entry to your settings that can be tweaked manually in your settings.json file.
Profiles can be created using either a path or a source, as well as a set of optional arguments. A source is available only on Windows and can be used to let VS Code detect the install of either PowerShell or Git Bash. Alternatively, a path pointing directly to the shell executable can be used. Here are some example profile configurations:
Tip: The integrated terminal shell is running with the permissions of VS Code. If you need to run a shell command with elevated (administrator) or different permissions, use platform utilities such as runas.exe within a terminal.
To remove a built-in profile and prevent it from showing up in the new terminal dropdown, set the name of the profile to null. For example, to remove the Git Bash profile on Windows, use this setting:
By default, the task/debug features will use the default profile. This may not be ideal if your default has a heavy PowerShell startup script or a non-POSIX compliant shell for example. To configure a profile to be used only in the debug/tasks features, use the terminal.integrated.automationProfile. setting:
Launching a terminal with a specific profile via a dedicated keybinding can be accomplished with the workbench.action.terminal.newWithProfile command. This command takes a profile name and optional location as arguments. For example, to bind Ctrl+Shift+T to open a terminal with the zsh profile:
Certain shells are installed in unsafe paths by default, like a path that could be written to by another user on a Windows environment. VS Code will still detect these but not expose them as a proper profile until they have been explicitly configured via the Terminal: Select Default Profile command. When configuring an unsafe profile, there will be a warning before it's added:
This profile should be picked up automatically when the CMDER_ROOT environment variable is set. It will also be detected as an unsafe profile if installed at C:\cmder. You may refer to Cmder's wiki for more information.
When PowerShell 6+ is installed, Windows PowerShell is not included in the profiles list by default. To add Windows PowerShell as a profile, choose the Select Default Profile option in the new terminal dropdown and select the Windows PowerShell item. This will configure the profile and set it as your default.
When running VS Code on your local machine, Windows Subsystem for Linux shells should be automatically detected. Depending on your setup, this may be a nuisance if you have a lot of distros installed. For finer control over the WSL profiles the automatic detection can be disabled with the terminal.integrated.useWslProfiles setting, then here's an example of how to manually configure a WSL shell:
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