In an attempt to modernize Windows 11, Microsoft has announced that Windows Terminal will be the default command-line experience in Windows 11 sometime next year.
Windows Terminal is a modern application for users of command-line tools such as Command Prompt (CMD), PowerShell, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Its main features include support for multiple tabs, Unicode and UTF-8 characters, a GPU text rendering engine, and custom themes, styles, and configurations.
The company announced the Windows Terminal app during the Microsoft Build 2019 event, and the app requires Windows 10 version 18362.0 or later, and Windows Terminal comes pre-installed on Windows 11 out of the box.
A default terminal is the terminal emulator that launches by default when you open a command-line application. In Windows, the default terminal was always Windows Console Host (conhost.exe), and shells like Command Prompt and PowerShell were always opened inside the Windows Console Host.
Users were not easily able to replace this default terminal emulator in Windows, as they had to use third-party tools to do the process, but now Microsoft is opening the function to allow other terminals to be set as default, including Windows Terminal.
On Windows 11, you can set Windows Terminal as your default experience, either inside the “Developer settings” page of Windows settings, inside Windows Terminal’s settings on the “Startup” page, or the Windows Console Host property sheet.
Throughout 2022, Microsoft plans to make Windows Terminal the default experience on Windows 11 devices, and it will begin testing this feature with Windows Insiders, before starting moving through other Insider rings until it reaches everyone on Windows 11. The company has not revealed any additional information about how (whether it will arrive with the annual update of Windows 11 or just a regular system update), nor about the exact date this feature will arrive, so we will have to wait and see how Microsoft will do this next year.