Microsoft revealed that it will make Windows Terminal the default command-line experience in Windows 11 sometime next year.

“A default terminal is the terminal emulator that launches by default when opening a command-line application,” Microsoft’s Kayla Cinnamon explains. “Starting from the dawn of Windows, the default terminal emulator has always been the Windows Console Host, conhost.exe. This means that shells such as Command Prompt and PowerShell have always opened inside the Windows Console Host.”

This continues into Windows 11, which is the first major Windows version to ship with Windows Terminal: when you open a command-line application in Windows 11, it still opens in Command Prompt. The difference is that the user can manually set Windows Terminal as the default. Oddly, this is a lot less tedious and error-prone than selecting a new default web browser: just open Settings, navigate to Privacy & security > For developers > Terminal and then make your choice with a single click.

But this will soon change, and Windows Terminal will become the default.

“Over the course of 2022, we are planning to make Windows Terminal the default [command line] experience on Windows 11 [PCs],” Cinnamon explains. “We will start with the Windows Insider Program and start moving through rings until we reach everyone on Windows 11.”

Nice.

Tagged with Windows Terminal