As a cybersecurity professional, I rely on various command line tools like PowerShell and Command Prompt to manage systems, analyze data, and automate workflows. But working across multiple terminals quickly becomes tedious.
That‘s why I was eager to try Windows Terminal when it was first announced – a centralized, tabbed terminal application for streamlining command line work.
Over the past few years using Terminal extensively, I‘ve found it dramatically boosts my productivity thanks to features like…
- Tabbed interface to simultaneously work across multiple shells and systems
- Extensive customizations from themes to advanced behaviors
- Flexible keyboard shortcuts for managing tabs, panes, and text
- Profiles to create preconfigured terminals for my unique needs
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll dive deep into everything Windows Terminal has to offer from an experienced user‘s perspective. I‘ll share tips and best practices so you too can benefit from this versatile tool.
A Brief History of Windows Command Line Tools
Command line interfaces have been a core component of the Windows operating system since the beginning. The first versions of Windows included the MS-DOS prompt which provided access to file system commands.
As Windows advanced into GUI focused versions like Windows 95 and Windows XP, new textual interfaces were introduced including Command Prompt and Windows PowerShell. However, these tools lacked more modern terminal capabilities like tabs, theming, and customization. Plus each tool existed in silos – lacking a central, unifying interface.
This fragmentation led power users to rely on third-party offerings to augment built-in tools. But diving between various terminal apps quickly became tedius and inefficient.
The Need for A Modern, Unified Terminal
There was growing need for Windows to offer an integrated terminal experience that combined the capabilities of both new and legacy tools like:
- Command Prompt (CMD)
- PowerShell
- Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
- Windows IoT Core Shell
- Azure Cloud Shell
Ideally this terminal would introduce new functionalities like:
- Tabbed interface – work across multiple systems/shells
- Customization – tailor to themes, shortcuts, behaviors
- Modern text rendering – unicode, emoji support
- Extensibility – integrate new tools and systems
A unified terminal would allow users to work seamlessly across different environments while optimizing workflows.
Introducing Windows Terminal
Announced in mid-2019 and included natively in Windows 11, Windows Terminal finally delivered that unified interace.
Right away I was impressed by Terminal‘s versatile feature set:
- Tabbed workflow to easily switch contexts
- Rich customization options from appearance to advanced behaviors
- Extensibility and shell integrations like WSL 2 or PowerShell
- Keyboard-driven navigation with shortcuts to boost speed
- Modern text rendering with GPU acceleration
Combined together into one slick application, these capabilities helped evolve my terminal game.
In the rest of this guide, we‘ll do a deep dive on Windows Terminal top to bottom – from getting started to pro tips. My goal is to help you unlock maximum productivity from this tool just like I have!
Key Benefits of a Tabbed Terminal
One of the biggest features of Windows Terminal is the introduction of tabs. Just like browsing the web, tabs allow working across multiple systems and tools simultaneously:
The productivity benefits of this tabbed workflow include:
- Organize multiple workstreams – group tools logical ways
- Quickly switch contexts as needed
- Compare data/outputs across systems
- Move content between tabs with copy+paste
- Access documentation/resources in another tab
This tabbed interface brings a web-like workflows to the command line. I now group my sessions into logical collections:
- Administration tools in one tab set
- Software projects in another tab group
- Documentation sites in a third set
With practice you learn to quickly Ctrl + Tab between workstreams for serious efficiency gains!
Based on my experience, here are some recommendations for organizing tabs:
- Separate elevated/admin tools – avoids accidentally running commands in the wrong session
- Group tools by role – Windows admin tools together, Kubernetes tools together
- Color code tabs -either manually or via profile customization
With this tabbed environment, I can now context switch in seconds between multiple systems instead of laboriously opening and positioning separate app windows.
Customizing Terminal‘s Appearance
Another area where Windows Terminal shines is its multitude of appearance customization options accessible under the settings/configuration file (Settings > Appearance).
You can tweak preferences like:
- Color themes – pick light, dark, high contrast
- Background image/blur – add personal flair
- Font face and weight – find your perfect coding font!
- Text smoothing – fine tune readability
- Padding and margins – balance whitespace
Plus you can have different preferences per profile – so your PowerShell tabs can have one theme while Command Prompt uses another.
Here are some customization best practices I‘ve gathered over time:
- Test color schemes on real command output not just demo text
- Enable text blurring for transparency without readability loss
- Combine similar tools into one color scheme for visual association
- Design accessible themes considering color blindness
With the customization flexibility, you can really make Terminal visually yours in a way no other built-in Windows tool has offered before.
Controlling Terminal Via Keyboard
One design priority for Windows Terminal was improving keyboard use – critical for efficient command line interaction.
As a result, Terminal offers extensive shortcut support for:
- Navigation – tab switching, pane splitting
- Text selection and editing – select, copy, paste, find
- Window management – new tabs/panes, full screen
- Accessibility – increasing text size, high contrast
Plus you can fully customize shortcuts to your specific preferences.
Here are some of my most used hotkeys:
| Action | Hotkey |
|---|---|
| New tab | Ctrl+Shift+T |
| Close tab | Ctrl+Shift+W |
| Copy selection | Ctrl+C |
| Paste | Ctrl+V |
| Find text | Ctrl+F |
You can see the full list at aka.ms/terminal-hotkeys.
I encourage spending time becoming fluent with Terminal keyboard shortcuts – it will seriously boost your speed!
Extending Functionality via Extensions
While packed with great built-ins, Windows Terminal also offers extension support to add new functionality.
The extensions ecosystem continues to grow. Some of the most popular include:
- Windows Subsystem for Linux – Run Linux environments directly within Windows
- PowerToys – System utilities for power users
- Azure Cloud Shell – Manage cloud resources from command line
- Docker CLI Extension – Control Docker desktop from Terminal
- GitHub CLI – Manage GitHub repos and work items
You can browse available extensions at aka.ms/terminal-marketplace and add them right from the Terminal UI.
Extensions help augment Terminal functionality for specialized needs – saving you from needing to install separate tools!
Conclusion
In my experience moving to Windows Terminal from a fragmented set of command line tools, the combination of tabbed management, customization, and keyboard control have massively leveled up efficiency.
I can now easily switch between tools and systems, tailor my ideal user experience, and speed up text interaction via shortcuts.
For developers, IT pros, administrators, and power users on Windows, adopting Windows Terminal should be a priority upgrade. It fully unlocks the command line as a productive, customizable environment for your unique needs.
Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions! I‘m happy to provide tips from my years of using Terminal.
