Windows Terminal: tabs, panes and profiles for every shell on Windows
Microsoft's modern terminal for Windows, with tabs, split panes, GPU rendering, Unicode and emoji support and profiles for PowerShell, cmd, WSL distributions and SSH connections.
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microsoft/terminal
- Stars
- 105.2k
- Forks
- 9.7k
- Language
- C++
- Licence
- MIT
- Last push
- 14 Oct 2026
On GitHub: The new Windows Terminal and the original Windows console host, all in the same place!
Open on GitHubmicrosoft/terminal (about 105,000 stars) contains Windows Terminal and the original Windows console host (conhost.exe). Windows Terminal is the default terminal application on Windows 11. It opens any command-line program in a tab or pane: PowerShell 7, Windows PowerShell, Command Prompt, every installed WSL distribution, Azure Cloud Shell and anything else you add, such as ssh to a server or Git Bash.
Use it instead of the classic console window when you want several shells side by side, a readable font with ligatures and proper Unicode, true-color themes, copy and paste that behaves like other apps, and a settings.json you can version and copy between machines. Each profile has its own starting directory, color scheme and icon, so your production SSH session can be red and your WSL tab green. Keyboard shortcuts such as Alt+Shift+D (split pane) and Ctrl+Shift+T (new tab) are configurable.
It is preinstalled on Windows 11. On Windows 10 install it from the Microsoft Store or with winget install --id Microsoft.WindowsTerminal -e; a Preview channel exists for early features. Open it with wt from the Run dialog or any shell, for example wt -d C:\Projects to start in a folder or wt -p Ubuntu to open a specific profile. Settings are reached with Ctrl+,, and the JSON file behind them lives under %LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState.
Windows Terminal is developed by the Windows console team at Microsoft and released under the MIT license. Its documentation lives at learn.microsoft.com, and the repository’s issues are where rendering, font and shell integration features are discussed.
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