Microsoft has released new versions of Windows Terminal to users running both the general and the preview versions. Windows Terminal version 1.4 is now rolling out to general users bringing all the features made available as part of the preview in September. This version brings features such as support for jump lists in the start menu, embedded hyperlinks, blink graphics, and more.
The preview now moves to version 1.5 and brings a whole bunch of new features. These include support for full hyperlinks. The terminal can now automatically detect hyperlinks and allows users to click on the links using the Ctrl + click combination to open them in a browser. The firm showed off this feature in the sizzle video during launch. Another addition is the support for the BEL character that can be enabled through the "bellStyle" profile setting.
Version 1.5 also brings support for using emojis in profile icons. However, emojis are not supported in jump lists. There are improvements to the tab switcher too, with the ability to set the tabs to switch between the most recently used ones or as per the order that they are arranged, in the terminal. Some other minor additions include the ability to start the terminal in Focus mode, the option to use the desktop wallpaper as the terminal’s background image, and the choice to completely disable all animations.
The command palette is also receiving a bunch of new features. The “>” prefix is now reconfigured to action mode and matches that of VS Code, which can also be removed by hitting backspace, thus returning to command line mode. There is a new back button to move back to the root menu from nested menus, and matching keywords in search results show up in a bold font.
Lastly, there are two new actions. The "openTabRenamer" action opens the tab renaming text box and the "togglePaneZoom" action helps “expand the pane to fit the entire contents of the terminal window”.
As usual, the release also brings a bunch of bug fixes:
- The terminal is much faster when launching, opening tabs, and closing tabs when you have a lot of profiles.
- Clicking links inside the terminal will no longer hang.
- The jump list will now display icons that use forward slashes in their file paths.
- Failure to write to your settings file will now display a warning.
- When using a screen reader, it is much faster when moving to the next word.
Users that installed Windows Terminal from the Microsoft Store should be able to update to the latest version automatically. These updates can also be installed manually from the GitHub page here that contains both the preview version and the version being made generally available.