Scripting and Recovery

Scriptable / non-interactive

For dotfiles managers, CI, or anything that needs a one-shot apply (no menu), there's a direct script:

# apply.ps1 ships inside the module, whose location differs by install
# method (and changes with every update on a PSGallery install), so ask
# the module where it is rather than hard-coding a path:
$base = Split-Path (Get-Module -ListAvailable TerminalStyles |
                    Sort-Object Version -Descending |
                    Select-Object -First 1).Path -Parent
pwsh -File (Join-Path $base 'apply.ps1') -Style umbrella -Target "PowerShell" -BackgroundImage "C:\img.gif"

apply.ps1 is the same logic as the interactive picker but driven entirely by flags. It writes a timestamped settings.json.bak-<timestamp> (and a $PROFILE.bak-<timestamp> when overwriting one) before applying, keeping a full audit trail of every run. See apply.ps1 -? for the full parameter list.

It edits the settings.json of the Windows Terminal it runs in, as tstyles does. Run outside one — from a scheduled task, say — on a machine where more than one build has a settings.json, it cannot tell which you mean and stops: pass -SettingsPath.

Recovering from a bad write to settings.json

There is exactly ONE rolling backup, settings.json.bak (no timestamp), in the same directory as the settings.json tstyles edited — that of the Windows Terminal you ran it in. Every command that writes settings.json rolls it first: tstyles <name>, tstyles random, tstyles reset, tstyles font <name>, tstyles tune, and opening the picker (tstyles with no arg, which backs up before its first preview). So it holds the state from immediately before the most recent of those — a font change or a tune after an apply is what you will get back, not the file from before the apply. To restore it:

# Stable's. Preview and Canary keep theirs in their own package folders under
# Packages (Microsoft.WindowsTerminalPreview_8wekyb3d8bbwe,
# Microsoft.WindowsTerminalCanary_8wekyb3d8bbwe), an unpackaged build under
# "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\Windows Terminal", and a portable one in the
# settings folder beside WindowsTerminal.exe.
$wt = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\settings.json"
Copy-Item "$wt.bak" $wt -Force

Windows Terminal's Settings → Open JSON file opens the one in use, and tstyles <name>, random, reset and font print the backup's path as they take it (Backed up settings to: ...). If the write itself then fails — a read-only settings.json, or one another program has locked — the command stops at Could not write <path>: <reason>. It prints no success line and leaves the style record and your prompt as they were; the .bak it has just taken is a copy of the file as it still is.

tstyles reset is not a substitute: it removes the fields a style added, but it cannot put back what the style overwrote — your own colorScheme, your font.face, or the JSONC comments a successful apply drops when it re-serializes the file. The .bak is the only route back to those.

A crash mid-pick or mid-tune is recoverable from the same file. Pressing Esc in the picker or the tuner reverts in-memory to the exact prior bytes without needing it — unless settings.json cannot be written at that moment, when it says so instead of "Reverted." and prints the Copy-Item that puts this .bak back. If you want a full history of changes rather than just "undo the most recent write", use apply.ps1 — it keeps a timestamped backup per run.

VS Code keeps its own copy. The first write of a style into a VS Code-family settings.json that already has content copies the file beside it as settings.json.bak-<timestamp>, taken before any TerminalStyles key was in it. Try tstyles reset from that editor's terminal first; the copy is the way back from anything a reset cannot fix, and restoring it also undoes any edit you made to the file since it was taken:

# Stable VS Code on macOS. The folder follows the editor's name -- Code - Insiders,
# VSCodium, Cursor or Windsurf in place of Code -- and sits under "$env:APPDATA"
# on Windows and ~/.config on Linux.
$vs = "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Code/User/settings.json"
Copy-Item "$vs.bak-<timestamp>" $vs -Force