Microsoft releases Windows Terminal 1.7 Preview with support for single-instancing and remote control

It’s been a month since Microsoft released Windows Terminal 1.6 Preview, the first update in 2021 of its powerful command line tool. That brought with it a new UI for Settings, as well as various other minor improvements.

The software giant is now rolling out Terminal 1.7 Preview, a move which means Terminal 1.6 is now generally available to all Windows 10 users.

Terminal 1.7 Preview is quite an extensive update, with lots of changes and improvements, including giving users the ability to launch new instances of Terminal in a separate window, in a window on the same desktop, or in any existing window.

The Settings UI introduced in Terminal 1.6 is the default Settings experience now, and there’s also a useful read-only feature which prevents you accidentally typing into a window.

The full changelog is as follows:

Features

• Terminal now supports single-instancing and remote control!
  • You can configure whether new instances of Terminal launch in a new window (#9118)
    • For now, the default is to launch in a new window. Available options include launching in "a new window", "a window on the same desktop", "any existing window", "a totally random window"
      • I regret to inform you that the last option was a joke.
  • The newWindow action (bound to Ctrl+Shift+N by default) will create a new window (#9208)
  • wt can now run commands in any window that already exists with wt -w # (#8898)
    • You can specify wt -w -1 to force the creation of a new window even if you've disabled it with the Windowing Behaviors
    • Specifying a window that does not exist (wt -w 1048576) will result in a new window being created with that ID (!)
  • Windows that are activated through remote control will be pulled to the foreground (#9137)
• The Settings UI, first released in 1.6 preview, is now the default settings experience (#9224)
  • The settings UI has been disabled in the stable release to give us more time to iterate on it.
• Terminal now supports focus-follows-mouse mode among panes for that authentic X11 feeling (thanks @Don-Vito!) (#8965) (#9198)
• You can now mark a pane as read-only—it can't be closed and will warn you if you type into it (thanks @Don-Vito!) (#8867) (#9107)
• You can now bind the findNext and findPrev actions to move to the previous/next search (respectively) (thanks @Hegunumo!) (#8917)
• There is a new global setting, centerOnLaunch (boolean, default false) that determines pretty much what it says on the tin (#9036)
• We now have support for loading profiles and color schemes from auxiliary fragments provided by applications. See the fragment extension documentation for more details! (#7632)

Changes

• This version of Terminal comes with Cascadia Code 2102.25, which contains a number of bug fixes to the 2102.03 release.
• You can now suppress that somewhat annoying "Touch Keyboard and Dialogs That Stop Me From Doing My Job" service warning with the inputServiceWarning global settings (boolean; default true) (thanks @WVVxm!) (#9015)
• The tab bell icon will now show up even when visual belling is disabled (#9212)
• The zoom, bell, read-only and progress indicators will now show up in the tab switcher (thanks @Don-Vito!) (#9041) (#9076)
• A number of keys that did not properly report their Ctrl status now do so (thanks @lhecker!) (#8870)
• Leonard's fixed Ctrl+Alt+2 to properly send ^[^@ (thanks @lhecker!) (#5272)
• We've refactored how terminal settings propagate from your profile to a terminal, so please report any issues where your settings are lost/ignored/flicker/etc. (#8602)
• URLs under the file scheme are no longer considered invalid (#7526)

Settings UI

• Overridden settings will now present a "revert" arrow that lets you clear the overriding value (#8919) (#9079)
• You can now typeahead search in combo boxes (#9206)
• The color schemes page has received a huge redesign (thanks @Chips1234, @mdtauk, @carlos-zamora!) (#9196)
• We've added a simple read-only page to the Settings that shows your key bindings (#9253)

VT Support

• Terminal now supports "bracketed paste" mode (DECSET 2004) and will filter out all control characters even during non-bracketed ("plebian") paste (thanks @skyline75489!) (#9034)
• We now support XTPUSHSGR and XTPOPSGR, sequences which will manipulate a 10-deep "SGR stack" (thanks @jazzdelightsme!) (#1978)
  • XTPUSH/POPSGR are intended to allow applications to better coordinate their colors. Instead of resetting to the default colors at the end of a run, an
    enlightened application can push a "stack frame" before it changes the colors, change them, then pop that frame when it is done.
  • This sequence first became available in xterm-334.
• You can now "chain" OSC 10, 11 and 12 color changes (thanks @skyline75489!) (#8999)

Bug Fixes

• You can now navigate the tab color picker with the directional arrows (thanks @BenConstable9!) (#9144)
• We will try not to dismiss the selection when you're using a Windows-key shortcut (thanks @imaginary-person!) (#9163)
• We've ensured that hyperlinks de-underline when the pointer leaves the terminal (thanks @Don-Vito!) (#9195)
• The arrow keys should work in the tab switcher once more (thanks @Don-Vito!) (#9140)
• The build system was leaving a stray 600kb file in our package, which we've now removed (making the package smaller!) (#9153)
• Focus should now return to the terminal after you dismiss the tab rename field (thanks @Don-Vito!) (#9162)

You can download Windows Terminal Preview v1.7.572.0 from here.