Release Windows Terminal Preview v1.14.143

Welcome to the terminaldome! Today this release page is graced by the works of pinch hitter (and pinch release notes writer)  @carlos-zamora.

Why are there so many packages? How do I choose?

Features

• Windows Terminal now has better support for the xterm "Alternate Screen Buffer", and can now handle alternate scroll mode and resize/reflow better ( #12561) ( #12569) ( #12719)
• Using windowed applications from the terminal should work much better now
  • ConPTY can now handle show/hide window calls and even knows who the window owner is ( #12515) ( #12526)
  • Windows created by console apps now appear above the terminal ( #12799) ( #12899)
  • Focus events are now sent through VT input ( #12900)
• You can now use the experimental.useBackgroundImageForWindow (bool, default false) global setting to apply one background image for your entire window! ( #12893) ( #13114) (thanks  @nico-abram!)
• You are now able to select all the text in the buffer using the selectAll action. This is bound by default to ctrl+shift+a ( #13045) ( #13084)

Changes

UI

• @dansmor7 contributed some visual changes to the tabs, scrollbar, new tab button, caption buttons, color picker, settings UI, command palette, and search box to move us closer to the Windows 11 design language. Really just about any WinUI surface we have, it's been polished up! (thanks  @dansmor7!) ( #12913) ( #12916) ( #12973) ( #13083)
• RadioButtons in the settings UI have been replaced with ComboBoxes. This gives an added bonus to keyboard and screen reader users, and makes it easier to navigate through and change these settings. ( #12833)

Interactivity

• The IME input mode now defaults to English when interacting with Windows Terminal ( #13028) (thanks  @YanceyChiew!)
• Terminal is now aware of toggled state for Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, and Num Lock ( #12823) (thanks  @matkaas!)

Settings

• There's now a VERY EXPERIMENTAL new VT passthrough mode setting that makes ConPTY do minimal translations and may make your terminal a little faster and a lot more broken! ( #11264) ( #13051) ( #13109)
  • Use the experimental.connection.passthroughMode (bool, default true) profile setting and it should be set on the profile's next launch
  • WARNING This seems to mostly work with CMD and WSL. PowerShell is mostly sad.
• The trimBlockSelection global setting now defaults to true ( #12737)
• Terminal now ignores newTab actions with a profile index greater than the number of profiles ( #11621)

Atlas Renderer Improvements

• ClearType is no longer always enabled ( #12705)
• The grayscale blending shader should now be working properly ( #12734)
• OpenConsole's leak check report should be fixed now ( #12415)
• The shader power draw was reduced using explicit branching ( #12552)
• The renderer is now smarter about when to resize the buffer when scrolling ( #13100)

Documentation

• Our GitHub repo now supports rich code navigation ( #12855) ( #12910) ( #12910). Bug reports are also automatically tagged as bugs ( #12404) (thanks  @snxx-lppxx!)
• We've uploaded specs for Theme-controlled color scheme switching ( #12613) (thanks  @arkthur!) and Default Terminal ( #7414)
• The README has been updated to mention the required .NET Targeting Pack ( #12896) (thanks  @pizzaz93!)
• Words are hard! Thanks to  @sebastiansterk,  @DimitriPapadopoulos, and  @jsoref for making sure we use the right words and grammar across our repo. ( #12386) ( #12475) ( #12835)
• bellSound is now in the schema ( #13035) (thanks  @pizzaz93!)

Bug Fixes

• Terminal should be able to find Cascadia Mono... Third time's the charm? ( #12904)
• commandline in profile.defaults should no longer override the commandlines of profiles that specify cmd.exe or powershell.exe. ( #12906)
• Get rid of a memory leak in onecore interactivity ( #12340)
• We should be maintaining the virtual viewport bottom properly now ( #12972) ( #13052) ( #13087) (thanks  @j4james!)
• Screen readers can now read some settings in the UI better ( #13032)
• Replace "acrylic" with "acrylic material" for localization purposes ( #12505)
• The "close tab" button color now matches the tab text color ( #13018) (thanks  @ianjoneill!)

Reliability

• Fix a crash when deleting the last profile in the settings UI ( #13044)
• Fix resize crash in OpenConsole when using the Atlas Renderer ( #13015)

Code health and Maintainability

• @j4james unified the terminal and console's VT handlers, deleting thousands of lines of redundant code in the process! ( #12207) ( #12247) ( #12389) ( #12390) ( #12568) ( #12703) ( #13024) ( #13039) (thanks  @j4james!)
• Added some missing breaks to cases in IslandWindow ( #12926) (thanks  @jmelas!)
• Added the MIT license for a few files that were missing it ( #12368) (thanks  @jerry-shao!)
• Replaced sizeof with ARRAYSIZE in SystemConfigurationProvider ( #12273) (thanks  @abdoulkkonate!)
• Use type inference throughout the project ( #12975)
• Use memcmp for TextAttribute & TextColor comparison ( #10566) (thanks  @skyline75489!)
• Thanks to  @ianjoneill,  @achermack,  @YanceyChiew,  @EmJayGee,  @dmachaj, and  @j4james for performing a ton of build system, code health and maintainability improvements!

Release Windows Terminal Preview v1.14.143 · microsoft/terminal