Add Extensions page to Settings UI #18559

carlos-zamora · 2025-02-11T00:50:05Z

Summary of the Pull Request

Adds an Extensions page to the Settings UI. This lets you enable/disable extensions and see how they affect your settings (i.e. adding/modifying profiles and adding color schemes). This page is specifically designed for fragment extensions and dynamic profile generators, but can be expanded on in the future as we develop a more advanced extensions model.

App extensions extract the name and icon from the extension package and display it in the UI. Dynamic profile generators extract the name and icon from the generator and display it in the UI. We prefer to use the display name for breadcrumbs when possible.

A "NEW" badge was added to the Extensions page's NavigationViewItem to highlight that it's new. It goes away once the user visits it.

Detailed Description of the Pull Request / Additional comments

Settings Model changes:
- FragmentSettings represents a parsed json fragment extension.
- FragmentProfileEntry and FragmentColorSchemeEntry are used to track profiles and color schemes added/modified
- ExtensionPackage bundles the FragmentSettings together. This is how we represent multiple JSON files in one extension.
- IDynamicProfileGenerator exposes a DisplayName and Icon
- ExtensionPackages created from app extensions extract the DisplayName and Icon from the extension
- ApplicationState is used to track which badges have been dismissed and prevent them from appearing again
- a std::unordered_set is used to keep track of the dismissed badges, but we only expose a get and append function via the IDL to interact with it
Editor changes - view models:
- ExtensionsViewModel operates as the main view model for the page.
- FragmentProfileViewModel and FragmentColorSchemeViewModel are used to reference specific components of fragments. They also provide support for navigating to the linked profile or color scheme via the settings UI!
- ExtensionPackageViewModel is a VM for a group of extensions exposed by a single source. This is mainly needed because a single source can have multiple JSON fragments in it. This is used for the navigators on the main page. Can be extended to provide additional information (i.e. package logo, package name, etc.)
- CurrentExtensionPackage is used to track which extension package is currently in view, if applicable (similar to how the new tab menu page works)
Editor changes - views:
- Extensions.xaml uses a lot of data templates. These are reused in ItemsControls to display extension components.
- ExtensionPackageTemplateSelector is used to display ExtensionPackages with metadata vs simple ones that just have a source (i.e. Git)
- Added a NewInfoBadge style that is just an InfoBadge with "New" in it instead of a number or an icon. Based on Add "new" labels to navigation PowerToys#36939
- The visibility is bound to a get call to the ApplicationState conducted via the ExtensionsPageViewModel. The VM is also responsible for updating the state.
Lazy loading extension objects
- Since most instances of Terminal won't actually open the settings UI, it doesn't make sense to create all the extension objects upon startup. Instead, we defer creating those objects until the user actually navigates to the Extensions page. This is most of the work that happened in CascadiaSettingsSerialization.cpp. The SettingsLoader can be used specifically to load and create the extension objects.

Validation Steps

✅ Keyboard navigation feels right
✅ Screen reader reads all info on screen properly
✅ Accessibility Insights FastPass found no issues
✅ "Discard changes" retains subpage, but removes any changes
✅ Extensions page nav item displays a badge if page hasn't been visited
✅ The badge is dismissed when the user visits the page

Follow-ups

Streamline a process for adding extensions from the new page
Long-term, we can reuse the InfoBadge system and make the following minor changes:
- SettingContainer: display the badge and add logic to read/write ApplicationState appropriately (similarly to above)
- XPageViewModel:
  - count all the badges that will be displayed and expose/bind that to InfoBadge.Value
  - If a whole page is new, we can just style the badge using the NewInfoBadge style

carlos-zamora · 2025-02-19T20:30:12Z

Demo

carlos-zamora · 2025-02-19T20:32:08Z

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsEditor/AddProfile.xaml

@@ -59,7 +59,7 @@
                                <IconSourceElement Grid.Column="0"
                                                   Width="16"
                                                   Height="16"
-                                                   IconSource="{x:Bind mtu:IconPathConverter.IconSourceWUX(Icon), Mode=OneTime}" />
+                                                   IconSource="{x:Bind mtu:IconPathConverter.IconSourceWUX(EvaluatedIcon), Mode=OneTime}" />


📝 Admittedly, a drive by. Happy to pull this out into a separate PR if desired.

carlos-zamora · 2025-02-19T20:33:43Z

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsEditor/CommonResources.xaml

@@ -1199,7 +1199,7 @@
        <Setter Property="HorizontalAlignment" Value="Stretch" />
        <Setter Property="CornerRadius" Value="{ThemeResource ControlCornerRadius}" />
        <Setter Property="VerticalAlignment" Value="Stretch" />
-        <Setter Property="HorizontalContentAlignment" Value="Left" />
+        <Setter Property="HorizontalContentAlignment" Value="Stretch" />


📝 Had to update this style a bit to enable functionality for showing "Disabled" on the right side when an extension was disabled.

The way I made that work is that we have a 2-column grid. We need the grid to take up the entire horizontal content, so we need to set HorizontalContentAlignmen to stretch

carlos-zamora · 2025-02-19T20:38:44Z

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsEditor/NewTabMenu.xaml

-            <!--  TODO CARLOS: Icon  -->
+            <!--  TODO GH #18281: Icon  -->


📝 This one's on me 😅

carlos-zamora · 2025-02-19T20:40:32Z

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsEditor/SettingContainerStyle.xaml

@@ -227,6 +227,45 @@
        </Setter>
    </Style>

+    <!--  A basic setting container displaying immutable text as content  -->
+    <Style x:Key="SettingContainerWithTextContent"


📝 Used to display the Scope for an extension. Also allowed me to apply the SecondaryTextBlockStyle to the text shown on the right side (aka the value of Scope)

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsModel/GlobalAppSettings.cpp

carlos-zamora · 2025-02-19T20:52:19Z

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsEditor/Extensions.cpp

+            for (const auto&& entry : fragExt.ModifiedProfilesView())
+            {
+                // Ensure entry successfully modifies a profile before creating and registering the object
+                if (const auto& deducedProfile = _settings.FindProfile(entry.ProfileGuid()))
+                {
+                    auto vm = winrt::make<FragmentProfileViewModel>(entry, fragExt, deducedProfile);
+                    currentProfilesModified.push_back(vm);
+                    if (extensionEnabled)
+                    {
+                        profilesModifiedTotal.push_back(vm);
+                    }
+                }
+            }
+
+            for (const auto&& entry : fragExt.NewProfilesView())
+            {
+                // Ensure entry successfully points to a profile before creating and registering the object.
+                // The profile may have been removed by the user.
+                if (const auto& deducedProfile = _settings.FindProfile(entry.ProfileGuid()))
+                {
+                    auto vm = winrt::make<FragmentProfileViewModel>(entry, fragExt, deducedProfile);
+                    currentProfilesAdded.push_back(vm);
+                    if (extensionEnabled)
+                    {
+                        profilesAddedTotal.push_back(vm);
+                    }
+                }
+            }
+
+            for (const auto&& entry : fragExt.ColorSchemesView())
+            {
+                for (const auto& schemeVM : _colorSchemesPageVM.AllColorSchemes())
+                {
+                    if (schemeVM.Name() == entry.ColorSchemeName())
+                    {
+                        auto vm = winrt::make<FragmentColorSchemeViewModel>(entry, fragExt, schemeVM);
+                        currentColorSchemesAdded.push_back(vm);
+                        if (extensionEnabled)
+                        {
+                            colorSchemesAddedTotal.push_back(vm);
+                        }
+                    }
+                }
+            }


I'm only displaying the ones that were added successfully and point to something that already exists.

Long-term, do we want to do more here? Perhaps show the ones that weren't added successfully? I'm just not sure what the next steps would be and how we would want to approach this issue.

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsModel/GlobalAppSettings.cpp

DHowett

Stake: I want to be the second reviewer on this :)

DHowett

Reviewed everything inside TerminalSettingsModel

I'm wondering if there's something we can do to make all of this cheaper. We're now storing JSON blobs - sometimes multiple times (parsed and regenerated at different nesting levels) - for every fragment and every generated profile... for a scenario that 9/10 launches aren't going to experience (most people probably do not enter the settings UI, right?)

DHowett · 2025-04-18T20:15:57Z

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsModel/CascadiaSettings.idl

@@ -8,6 +8,12 @@ import "DefaultTerminal.idl";

 namespace Microsoft.Terminal.Settings.Model
 {
+    enum FragmentScope
+    {


Whatcha mean? Like, add App as a possible scope? FragmentScope currently has User and Machine to align with what the docs say about applications installed from the web. Would App align with Microsoft store apps? Would we present it as App to the user in the Settings UI?

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsModel/CascadiaSettings.idl

DHowett · 2025-04-18T20:16:54Z

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsModel/CascadiaSettings.idl

+    {
+        String ColorSchemeName { get; };
+        String Json { get; };
+        Boolean Conflict { get; };


💭 conflict, with what?

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsModel/CascadiaSettings.cpp

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsModel/CascadiaSettings.h

DHowett · 2025-04-18T20:28:51Z