Windows Terminal Preview 1.10 adds Quake Mode to the system tray and more

Microsoft today announced the release of Windows Terminal Preview 1.10, which means that preview version 1.9 will soon head to users running the stable version. However, that version will not include the ability to set the tool as the default terminal, or the ability to edit actions from the Settings UI. Those features are still limited to the preview version. With that out of the way, Windows Terminal Preview 1.10 brings a few changes such as the addition of a command palette button to the dropdown menu, new actions, and more.

First up is the addition of the command palette button to the dropdown menu. The firm says that the Feedback button within the dropdown menu “was hardly used”, which is why it was changed to the command palette button to make better use of the real estate. The palette can also be launched using the Ctrl+Shift+P shortcut.

Another interesting change coming with version 1.10 is the addition of Quake Mode to the system tray. Quake Mode was added to Terminal with the previous release and allows users to summon the terminal at the top half of the screen from anywhere using the Win + ` key combination. With the latest release, dismissing the quake window sends it to the system tray, from where it can be quickly opened again. This works even when the parent terminal instance is not running in the taskbar.

The firm also provided some information about changes to the Settings UI, saying that it is working to “design a new UI solution” to accommodate a page for ‘defaults’, or the base layer, which it says is highly requested. Currently, it plans to bring a ‘Defaults’ page into the Settings UI but also aims to design an extensions page to let users manage their JSON fragment extensions.

The latest preview also brings the ability for users to add new actions or keyboard shortcuts without removing existing actions, right from the Settings UI. Lastly, the company is adding support for rendering bold text in the text renderer.

As usual, these changes are accompanied by bug fixes and improvements. Here is the list of miscellaneous improvements that the company listed:

• You can now explicitly set your language preference for the terminal. This setting can be found on the Appearance page of the settings UI.
• The percentage sign is now added to all opacity slider values (Thanks @chingucoding!).
• You can now close tabs by index (Thanks @ianjoneill!).
• Font settings can now be represented as an object in your settings.json file.

And here is the list of bug fixes that are made with version 1.10:

• There should be many fewer crashes (hopefully none 😁) when opening the settings UI.
• Closing tabs should no longer crash in the terminal.
• You can now open a new tab using the command line without the terminal dismissing.
• Default terminal in version 1.10 is much more reliable in 22000.65. Default terminal in 1.10 is not compatible with 22000.51 and 1.9 is not compatible with 22000.65.
• Performance and reliability improvements.

Those that have installed the Terminal from the Microsoft Store will receive the latest version automatically. Alternatively, you can head to the GitHub page here to download the latest version of the preview.