Microsoft releases Windows Terminal 1.9 preview with new quake mode and more

This week is Windows Terminal's second birthday, and to celebrate Microsoft has released a new update that introduces a number of key changes and additions.

One of the biggest changes in Windows Terminal Preview 1.9 is the ability to set it as your default terminal emulator, but there are also changes to Settings -- which has an actual interface now rather than requiring JSON editing. On top of this, there is a new quake mode for easy Terminal access.

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The newly launched preview version means that the current stable build of the utility is Windows Terminal 1.8. But for anyone eager to keep up to date with all of the very latest features as soon as possible, it is the preview build that is of interest. One of the greatest additions to this new build is "quake mode" which is perfect for anyone looking for near-instant access to Terminal.

Writing about the new features on the Windows Command Line blog, Microsoft's Kayla says:

Windows Terminal now comes with quake mode! Quake mode allows you to quickly open a new terminal instance from anywhere in Windows by typing Win + `. The quake window will appear on the top half of your screen and can easily be dismissed with the same keyboard shortcut. If you want to further customize how you can summon the terminal, check out the new features we have added for global summon on our docs site.

Note: You cannot bind quake mode to a keyboard shortcut that is already bound in the OS. This includes PowerToys users who have Win + ` bound for the FancyZones layout editor. The PowerToys team recently changed their default keyboard shortcut to Win + Shift + ` to help avoid this conflict.

Other new features of this preview build include the ability to create new profiles, support for Arabic and Hebrew characters, an italicized Cascadia Code option and various fixes and improvements:

Miscellaneous improvements

You can now disable URL detection with the "experimental.detectURLs" global setting.

The last selected pivot will remain selected when navigating through profile pages in the settings UI (Thanks @kovdu!).

When choosing a color scheme with the command palette, the terminal will update with a preview of each one before selecting.

You can now remove trailing white-spaces when copying text (Thanks @Don-Vito!).

Bug fixes

The terminal will no longer crash when setting a tab color using the --tabColor command line argument.

The dropdown no longer randomly opens in the up direction (Thanks @mpela81!).

Long tooltips no longer get cut off (Thanks @Don-Vito!).

Clicking on the tab to focus the window now actually focuses the terminal window.

Windows Terminal 1.9 preview is available to download from the Microsoft Store as well as GitHub