Windows Terminal Preview v1.22.2362.0

[PankajBhojwani]

This is, perhaps, the largest release of Windows Terminal to date. I can't believe we're here, but we finally have support for Sixels and a new console hosting infrastructure (stay tuned for a NuGet package!) and more. Read up, and read down, to find out more.

Features

• Terminal and conhost now support Sixels! 🎤🫳 (Add support for Sixel images in conhost #17421) (thanks @j4james!) (Fix misalignment of Sixel image slices #17724) (thanks @j4james!) (AtlasEngine: Implement sixels #17581) (Fix sixels in BackendD2D #17636)
• We have rewritten how hosted console applications are translated for Windows Terminal (and other ConPTY consumers) to be based on direct API->VT translation rather than "rendering" a point-in-time snapshot of the display. This should result in improved throughput, reliability, correctness, plus an ability for applications to send unmodified VT directly to the terminal, but may result in some compatibility issues. Please file any issues you encounter with console applications. (A minor ConPTY refactoring: Goodbye VtEngine Edition #17510) (Address feedback from #17510 #17645) (ConPTY: Flush unhandled sequences to the buffer #17741) (ConPTY: Inject W32IM sequences #17757) (Fix a crash when disabling the ASB #17748) (Make the renderer optional #17442) (Abstract Write/FillOutput APIs with FillConsoleImpl #17573)
  • ... terminals which support DEC rectangular operations DECCRA and DECFRA should see higher fidelity app-based scrolling (Use DECCRA/DECFRA for ScrollConsoleScreenBuffer #17747)
• We now support a much wider range of Unicode, including Emoji with ZWJ, combining characters, flag sequences, and anything else that requires proper Grapheme Clusters! Applications can query support for grapheme clusters with DECRPM 2027, and users can now configure whether Unicode is measured like the vintage Windows Console, like Linux and macOS terminals using wcwidth, or with Grapheme Clusters like Contour and other modern terminal emulators. Global setting compatibility.textMeasurement (enum console, wcswidth, graphemes (default)) (Implement grapheme clusters #16916) (Remove some unused TextBuffer methods #17443)
• For the first time in decades, we've changed the popup UI (used for F7 and friends) in CMD! It now draws beneath the prompt (pushing the screen up) and has a modern TUI scrollbar if it doesn't all fit on the screen. (Use VT for COOKED_READ_DATA #17445) (Fix cooked read reflow under ConPTY #17668) (Fix various cooked read issues #17556)
• Terminal will now offer relevant packages from WinGet if you're running CMD on Windows 24H2 and run a nonexistent command (Add Quick Fix UI and support for custom CommandNotFound OSC #16848) (Use WinGet API to improve Quick Fix results #17614)
• You can now add actions like splitPane and sendInput: foo and quit directly to the New Tab dropdown menu! (Allow actions in the new tab dropdown #17281)
• You can now open a pane containing snippets (any sendInput actions!) with the openSnippets action! You can quickly access any commands you've saved in your JSON file, or with the new x-save command, and replay them with a new slick UI (Add a snippets pane #17330) (A trio of snippets pane fixes #17794) (Add a close button to the Snippets pane #17528)
  • ... snippets which can also be loaded from a .wt.json file in your current working directory (we're still working on docs, please stay tuned!) (Add support for local snippets in the CWD #17388)
  • ... snippets which can also be saved directly from the command line with wt x-save "text to save" (Add ability to save input action from command line #16513) (thanks @e82eric!) with additional fixes (x-save the commandline in the current window #17758)
• Ctrl+Shift+Period will now open the "quick actions" flyout, which contains snippets and suggestions. You can now also bind the quickFix action to open a menu containing only WinGet suggestions (as of today, on Windows 24H2) (Add action for Quick Fix and key binding for Suggestions #17502)
• You can now search with regular expressions in Terminal (and conhost!) (Add support for regex search to conhost and Terminal #17316)

Changes

• ReadConsoleOutput and WriteConsoleOutput will now handle out-of-bounds conditions as documented rather than as-made-up (Fix various Read/WriteConsoleOutput bugs #17567)
• Actions now have their own IDs, and key bindings just point at them; we've made changes to how this works to improve the action and binding experience in future versions (Refactor ActionMap and Command to use ActionIDs #17162) (Remove command's knowledge of its keys #17215)
• Command/input previews will now display in line with the cursor, in italic, in the right font (Re-implement previewing, with the new TSF #17386) (Dismiss the snippet preview when there is no suggestions #17777) (Dismiss a action preview when the next action isn't previewable #17533)
  • ... which you can display in RGB with the fun {profile}.experimental.rainbowSuggestions setting (boolean, default false) (Add an experimental setting for making suggestions RGB #17416)
• Commands displayed in the suggestions UI can now include descriptions (Add descriptions to commands (namely, snippets) #17376)
• Multi-cell glyph inputs will no longer be assumed to consume two code units (Remove IsGlyphFullWidth from InputBuffer #17680)
• Pixel shader authors rejoice! If your shader fails to compile, you'll now get a useful error message... (Display useful pixel shader compilation errors #17436) (thanks @blitzRahul!)
• Terminal will now no longer correct SGR 37 and SGR 40 when emitted by powershell.exe; this may result in regions of incorrect colors (Remove VT color quirk for PowerShell #17666) (Remove SetTextAttributes from the ITerminalApi interface #17685) (additional thanks @j4james for some cleanup!)
• Vintage console applications will no longer get corrupted responses from ReadConsoleOutput when Raster Fonts are enabled (Remove CHAR_INFO munging for raster fonts #17681)
• We have brought the new Windows 24H2 API out to the ConPTY NuGet package (Align the OSS ConPTY API with Windows 11 24H2 #17704)
• We have enabled "automatically mark prompts" (for shell integration) by default (Set the default for autoMarkPrompts to true #17761)
• We're now collecting data on which settings and actions folks are using (Log action dispatch occurrence #17718) (Track and log changes to settings #17678)
• We're trying something new, which is putting a short version of these release notes on the Windows Store (pdp: add quick release notes to the store pages #17730)
• We've changed the communication mechanism for the Default Terminal feature to allow the use of overlapped I/O (Add ITerminalHandoff3 in preparation for overlapped pipes #17575)
• We've reintroduced support for Alt+Numpad input of extended off-keyboard characters (Implement Alt-Numpad handling #17637) (During Alt+Numpad composition, stash keys in case we bail out #17774)
• When we reload a saved session, we will now display some of its contents on the screen (Show parts of the scrollback on restore #17334)

UI

• We've rewritten how selection colors work! They will now be drawn with appropriate contrast, at the exact color you specify, with a foreground that is black or white (whichever is most visible!) (Force selection FG to black or white depending on BG luminance #17753) (atlas: draw selection colors as background/foreground instead of alpha overlay #17725) (Introduce the concept of "selection spans" instead of "rects" #17638) (Port selection in conhost and Terminal to use til::generational #17676)
• The search box will no longer cover up search results in the top right (unless there's nowhere to scroll) (Avoid covering current search highlight with search box #17516) (thanks @e82eric!)
• Due to a build issue, we had to disable full optimization for this build. We apologize for any potential performance regressions. (Disable PGO for Release builds #17765)
• Terminal now comes with shiny new icons for the Visual Studio Dev Shells (Switch to the new and beautiful VS Dev Shell icons #17706)
• We have restored the ...s in some command palette names to help users find them (Add elipses back in to some command names #17715)
• You can now configure the theme for the Settings UI separately from the application with {theme}.settings.theme (enum light, dark, system; default: system) (Theme for settings #16479) (thanks @bundgaard!)

VT Features

• You can now configure the "Answerback" message sent in response to ENQ using the profile setting answerbackMessage (string, default: null) (conhost users: HKCU\Console AnswerbackMessage REG_SZ) (Add support for the VT answerback capability #17660) (thanks @j4james!)
• We now support the DEC VT paging operations, NP PP PPA PPR and PPB, as well as DECPCCM (page cursor coupling mode) and DECRQDE (request displayed extent) (Add support for VT paging operations #16615) (Account for viewport movement when wrapping over multiple rows #17353) (thanks @j4james!)
• Applications can now request the entire color palette using DECRQTSR DECCTR (CSI 1 ; Pt $ u) (Add support for querying the DECCTR color table report #17708) (thanks @j4james!)
• Applications can now query the cursor shape set with DECSCUSR using DECRQSS (DCS $ q SP q ST) (Add support for querying the DECSCUSR setting #17659) (thanks @j4james!)
• Applications can now query the size of character cells (CSI 16 t) and the entire text area (CSI 14 t), with a response measured in pixels (Add support for querying the character cell size #17504) (thanks @j4james!)
• Applications can now query the color palette with OSC 4 ?, and the default foreground (OSC 10 ?), background (OSC 11 ?), cursor (OSC 12 ?) and selection colors (OSC 17 ?) (Add support for querying Xterm dynamic colors and palette #17729)
• Applications can now change the selection color using OSC 17 (Allow OSC 17 to set the selection background color #17742)
• Reports generated in response to VT requests are once again given priority over other input (Improve reliability of VT responses #17786)

Bug Fixes

• We will no longer conveniently forget all the colors on the last line of the screen when you resize it (Fix colors getting lost on reflow #17568)
• Terminal will now more reliably save your session when your computer reboots to update (Fix session persistence when the session ends #17714)
• Background colors will no longer bleed over the edges of the screen when D2D is in use (such as over RDP to a VM) (atlas,d2d: overdraw the background bitmap by one cell on all sides #17674)
• conhost: pasting a file from File Explorer will no longer result in two copies of the path (Fix double paste when CF_UNICODETEXT & CF_HDROP are present #17543)
• conhost: when we generate Alt+Numpad events to input clipboard contents on Windows, we will now no longer mistranslate CP936 text (Fix alt-numpad events #17635)
• Curly underlines will now render properly on double-width DECDWL and double-height DECDHL lines (AtlasEngine: Fix curly line rendering on rows with line renditions #17679)
• cursor invalidation once again works properly on double-width or double-height lines (Fix cursor invalidation when line renditions are used #17234) (thanks @j4james!)
• cursor movement over ConPTY now works properly on double-width or double-height lines (Fix conpty cursor movement detection on double-width lines #17233) (thanks @j4james!)
• The rendering of curly underlines has been improved (AtlasEngine: Improve appearance of curly underlines #17501) (thanks @smprather for reporting!) (AtlasEngine: Curly line redux #17508)
• The Suggestions UI will no longer try to grab the PowerShell "ghost text" out of your input line (Clip the "current commandline" at the cursor position #17781)
• You can no longer insert a saveSnippet action in your JSON or bind it to any keys (Stop parsing saveSnippets actions in json #17535)
• You can now successfully input more than one Emoji at once on Windows 10 (Fix typing multiple emojis on Windows 10 #17213)
• You can once again cancel overwriting a key binding in the Settings UI (Fix overwrite key binding warning in the SUI #17763)
• You can once again disable the detection of URLs (Restore the ability to disable checking for URLs #17731)
• You can once again use Ctrl+D and Enter in a disconnected pane (Fix pane event handlers being unbound #17750)

Accessibility

• Accessibility API RangeFromPoint and ExpandToEnclosingUnit will no longer cause Terminal to hang (Fix UIA RangeFromPoint API #17695)

Performance

• Scrolling the screen will now result in less GPU traffic (due to erroneous invalidations) (AtlasEngine: Fix dirty rects during scrolling #17583)
• Terminal now makes fewer copies (and heap allocations) when writing input to the console app; it's also more correct! (Use a plain char array to pass connection input #17710)
• The command palette has lost some extraneous animations, so it should feel much faster (Remove the animations from the command palette too #17335)

Reliability

• AtlasEngine will no longer over-read a memory buffer when setting up a GPU texture (AtlasEngine: Fix a buffer overrun #17536)
• Closing a window when you have an unfocusedAppearance set will no longer result in unscheduled disassembly of your terminal (Guard Control UpdateAppearance/Settings against UAF #17770)
• Overall reliability should be improved by us having better exception handling (Make fire_and_forget exception safe #17783)
• Session restoration now works more reliably when the entire scrollback is full (Fix session restoration of full buffers #17654)
• We've fixed an instance of Terminal crashing during settings reload (Fix a crash during settings update #17751)
• You can no longer trivially crash Terminal by holding down Enter while spawning new tabs (Prevent a crash when holding enter when creating a tab #17788)

VT Compatibility

• ConPTY: responses longer than 4kb will no longer be corrupted (Fix input sequences split across the buffer boundary #17738) (thanks @j4james!)
• VT mouse events will once again be generated when your mouse is off the top of the terminal window (and as a bonus, we'll no longer autoscroll!) (Restore off-the-top behavior for VT mouse mode #17779)

Code Health

• Resize with reflow is, like, way faster in Debug builds (15x faster reflow in debug builds #17550)
• We added reloadEnvironmentVariables to our oft-forgotten JSON schema (schema: add reloadEnvironmentVariables to newTerminalArgs #17696)
• We've made some changes to the shell extension and elevation shim to make them easier to maintain (Slim down shell extension and elevate-shim #15327)
• build: all of our open-source dependencies have been migrated to vcpkg (Move our big OSS dependencies to vcpkg #15855)
• build: you can now launch Windows Terminal with F5 from Visual Studio (Make WindowsTerminal F5-runnable #17577)
• conpty: if your terminal fails to respond to DSR CPR, we'll continue without it in 3 seconds (Fix cursor inheritance #17576) (Implement a timeout for PSEUDOCONSOLE_INHERIT_CURSOR #17574)
• We've done some tidying on pane content to ensure that our implementations don't diverge (Create a base class for all pane content events #17537)
• We've made some improvements to how we handle movement across rectangles for copy operations (Improve Viewport and Viewport::WalkInBounds #17143)

---

Binary files inside the unpackaged distribution archive bear the version number 1.22.240823002-preview.

Asset Hashes

• Microsoft.WindowsTerminalPreview_1.22.2362.0_8wekyb3d8bbwe.msixbundle
  • SHA256 E00B06D4197E6002E9B92A076044F12B105956ABAF9DE058D9B3DF021B8A18B4
• Microsoft.WindowsTerminalPreview_1.22.2362.0_arm64.zip
  • SHA256 8F3A10ED10980379277127037FB4A66F40E1A113EDF83991B6FF7B2D24613BA5
• Microsoft.WindowsTerminalPreview_1.22.2362.0_x64.zip
  • SHA256 6EA8DAF670A28DD43823079617E2054A9A5F4411D0B7025C637B6C6276621D81
• Microsoft.WindowsTerminalPreview_1.22.2362.0_x86.zip
  • SHA256 AB59CFB83E645012733B13BF9C155C7F29D70E3DE75886D46F1CFAF64E90E915

---

This discussion was created from the release Windows Terminal Preview v1.22.2362.0.

[ofek]

How can one try out Sixel support? I can't quite find a program to play videos or display pictures in the terminal.

[Andarwinux]

This is a Windows limitation

I have good news! We finally fixed that.

What's that?

[zadjii-msft]

I have good news! We finally fixed that.

What's that?

He's referencing #7337, which I think shipped in Windows 26052, though I'm pretty sure we're backporting it to win10 too. Not sure we've got a blog post about that specifically though - we should!

[Andarwinux]

He's referencing #7337, which I think shipped in Windows 26052,

Good to know, I tried this on Canary and it worked great!

though I'm pretty sure we're backporting it to win10 too. Not sure we've got a blog post about that specifically though - we should!

Does backport apply to all Windows 10 versions? When will it be rolled out? For mpv, we still need support for Windows 10 1607.

[zadjii-msft]

Does backport apply to all Windows 10 versions

Definitely not. I believe (I am probably mistaken) that 19041 is the build that gets regular servicing, but the bar for bringing things back farther than that is much, much higher (and this probably wouldn't meet that criteria)

[lhecker]

FYI you can find the preliminary documentation here: MicrosoftDocs/Console-Docs#323

[sxyazi]

It seems like DA1 is broken in this release. When I query Sixel support by sending \x1b[c, the response doesn't include a valid CSI (\x1b) in the beginning:

[?61;4;6;7;14;21;22;23;24;28;32;42c

and it should be:

\x1b[?61;4;6;7;14;21;22;23;24;28;32;42c

I'm using Microsoft.WindowsTerminalPreview_1.22.2362.0_arm64.zip

[zadjii-msft]

I promoted this out to #17813 to make sure it gets its own investigation, thanks!

[AbraxasDMG]

Hi everyone.

I saw the following statement in the Preview v1.22 release notes:

⚡ Actions like splitPane, sendInput: someinput, and quit can now be added directly to the New Tab dropdown menu

I am trying to find any information on how to do that. Could anyone point me in the right direction?
Thanks in advance!

[zadjii-msft]

Op, good catch. Looks like we forgot to update https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/appearance#new-tab-dropdown

[zadjii-msft]

Filed MicrosoftDocs/terminal#794 to track this.

---

Say you have an action like

        {
            "command":
            {
                "action": "sendInput",
                "input": "git log -10 --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit"
            },
            "name": "git log -10",
            "id": "gitlog10"
        },

then you can add it to the menu with:

    "newTabMenu": 
    [
        {
            "type": "remainingProfiles"
        },
        {
            "id": "gitlog10",
            "type": "action"
        }

The id is the bit that's relevant. Just make sure the id in the newTabMenu matches the one in the actions

[VPraharsha03]

Big shout out to the devs! I was eagerly waiting to try this feature out.

Just tried out sixel support and compared them on the Windows terminal and OpenConsole, the feature seems to be complete on Windows Terminal but on the OpenConsole images produced are scaled higher and have jagged edges no matter what the resolution is,

command ran was img2sixel ~/kirby.png -w 350px -h 300px

Windows Terminal (1.22.240823002-preview)

Open Console:

[j4james]

The image is scaled to match the text, so the difference in size is assumedly because you're using different fonts or different font sizes. It should occupy the same number of text rows and columns in both terminals.

I'm not sure about the jagged edges, but that might just be a difference between the GDI renderer used in OpenConsole and the DirectX renderer use in Windows Terminal. This may not be officially supported, but you can enable the DirectX renderer in OpenConsole by going to the registry and creating a UseDx DWORD value inside the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console key, and setting the value to 1.

[VPraharsha03]

Thanks for the tip! Using DirectX renderer smoothened the edges

[damnskippy]

Just wondering - is there a reason (like minimum OS version or something) why Preview version installed via Microsoft Store wouldn't offer an upgrade or automatically upgrade to the latest version? I'm currently running preview version 1.21.1772.0, and while Store page shows the version 1.22.2362.0 as available including the section about "what's new in this version", it just doesn't offer an update option? FWIW, winver on my machine shows Version 22H2 (0S Build 22621.4037). Can I just force the upgrade by downloading the latest artifacts from the release page, would that cause a conflict with the Store installed version? Thanks.

[lhecker]

The version you download from the store is the exact same as from our release page and they will not conflict with each other. If you ever install Windows Terminal from our release page on GitHub, it'll even get updates from the Microsoft Store app as usual.

As to the reason why 1.22 isn't available yet: I believe we haven't rolled out the update in the store yet, but the store translations have already been updated, which includes the changelog.

[damnskippy]

Thank you!

[DHowett]

UGH. Nope, that was just me failing to push the packages at the same time as the release notes. I'm sorry.

[damnskippy]

No worries, and thanks @DHowett

[alvin-qh]

"Clear Buffer" command not work on this version? I execute "Clear Buffer" command but nothing was happened

[j4james]

It sounds like you're encountering the same problem as issue #17867.