Microsoft has launched Windows Terminal Preview 1.18 for command-line tools such as PowerShell, Command Prompt and WSL. The terminal has several new features including draggable tab tearout, moved from one terminal window to another, and an experimental context menu. The context menu can be activated manually through the settings.json file and offers users options such as paste, split a face, and duplicate or close a tab. Windows Terminal Preview 1.18 also features an improved text rendering engine, known as AtlasEngine, which prevents overlapping text and doesn’t cut off italic text, emojis and complex scripts.
In addition, the terminal’s environment variables can now be updated automatically on opening a new tab or pane, removing the need to restart the terminal after installations or changing the PATH. Windows Terminal 1.17 is considered stable, and incorporates support for deployment in portable mode for instances where MSIX packages cannot be installed or software from the Microsoft Store. Both the preview and stable versions of the terminal can be obtained from the Microsoft Store, the GitHub repository and via Windows Package Manager winget.
