The microsoft/terminal repository contains the source code for Windows Terminal, Windows Terminal Preview, the Windows console host (conhost.exe), and shared components between these projects. Windows Terminal is a modern, feature-rich command-line application designed to replace the traditional Windows console experience, while the console host represents the original Windows command-line infrastructure that has been part of Windows for decades. The repository also includes ColorTool and sample projects demonstrating how to consume the Windows Console APIs.
Windows Terminal addresses longstanding limitations of the legacy console host by providing support for tabs, rich text rendering, extensive configurability, theming and styling, globalization features, and modern Unicode support including emoji. The Windows Console host itself, conhost.exe, serves as Windows' command-line user experience and hosts the command-line infrastructure, API server, input engine, rendering engine, and user preferences. Since the team took ownership of the Windows command-line in 2014, they have added features to the console including background transparency, line-based selection, ANSI and Virtual Terminal sequence support, 24-bit color, and the Pseudoconsole (ConPTY). However, the console host's primary goal of maintaining backward compatibility prevented the addition of features like tabs and full Unicode support, which led to the creation of Windows Terminal as a separate modern application.
The repository is written in C++ and is classified across multiple domains including console, command-line, emulator, Windows, developer tools, customization, shells, productivity, and interface design. Installation options include the Microsoft Store (recommended), GitHub releases, Windows Package Manager (winget), Chocolatey, and Scoop. Windows Terminal Canary provides nightly builds with the latest code from the main branch, available as both an App Installer distribution and portable ZIP distribution across multiple architectures.
The codebase underwent significant modernization during the Windows Console overhaul, introducing clean separation of logical entities into modules and classes, replacing legacy collections with safer STL containers, and adopting Microsoft's Windows Implementation Libraries (WIL) for improved code safety and efficiency. This modernization resulted in several key components becoming available for reuse in any terminal implementation on Windows, including a DirectWrite-based text layout and rendering engine, a text buffer capable of storing both UTF-16 and UTF-8, and a VT parser/emitter.
GitGenius activity data shows substantial ongoing development with 2769 tracked issues and pull requests. The most active issue labels are Issue-Bug (1688 occurrences), Product-Terminal (1289), and Needs-Tag-Fix (1058). The top contributors tracked by GitGenius are DHowett with 3564 events, carlos-zamora with 2394 events, and zadjii-msft with 2049 events. The median response latency for issues and pull requests is 0.0 hours, though the mean latency of 8617.1 hours reflects some longer-term items. The repository shares contributors with microsoft/vscode, microsoft/powertoys, and microsoft/typescript, indicating cross-project collaboration within Microsoft's developer tools ecosystem. The project explicitly welcomes contributions and includes good-first-issue labels to help new contributors get started.
