Windows Terminal Preview v1.26.2734.0

[Dustin L. Howett (DHowett)]

We're coming out of our long Summer (northern hemisphere) hibernation to bring you a new Preview release of Windows Terminal: 1.26! We've been hard at work on the Settings page, workspaces, notifications, and general fit and finish. Lots more community contributions this time around (thank you to all of you!) and many of the bug fixes you see here have been backported to 1.25 and--in some cases--1.24!

Features

• This release includes our newly-redesigned settings UI! Broadly, the categories are the same, but we've given a new interface to most of our settings, simplified wording, moved things into logical groups, and more. Profiles is probably the biggest difference, where we've moved all of the profile tabs, color schemes and the Defaults section into one top-level "Profiles" area (Port SettingsCard/Expander from WCT and update SUI to use it #20232) (Display reason for launch at login setting being disabled by OS setting #20743) (Update profile subpages #20336) (sui: fix the Spacebar on things inside settings cards #20665) (Add expander groups to settings UI #20200) (Fix query button in SUI search box #20658) (Convert NTM folder name expander to card #20646) (Update styling of Actions page #20215) (Introduce Profiles page to SUI #20199)
• We have added early support for "workspaces," or named Terminal windows which remember what was open in them that you can close and come back to. Access Workspaces with the new icon to the left of the tab list (Add support for "workspaces" based on window names (redux) #20314) (Add a new window entry to the workspace flyout #20663)
• We now support applications emitting a notification with OSC 777 (Desktop Notification, from urxvt) and additionally support for displaying a notification when a bell is triggered. Please note that both of these behaviors are off by default, and require you to opt in to enable them. JSON settings $profile.compatibility.allowOSC777 (boolean) and $profile.bellStyle enum value notification (Add support for OSC777 (Send Notification) #20012) (Set AppUserModelID for unpackaged #20018) (Add a setting for sending a notification on BEL #20011) ([Unpackaged] Fix taskbar glomming due to AUMID #20064) (Add toast notification infrastructure #20010)
• The "confirm closing tabs" setting has been redesigned to prompt any time you are going to close more than one thing, prompt always or prompt never (Replace confirmCloseAllTabs with confirmOnClose #20055)

Changes

• wt --help will try to be more clear about how unrecognized arguments are handled (Explain implicit new-tab arguments in wt.exe help menu #20417) (thanks Manya Sharma (@ManyaS-Git)!)
• Duplicating a tab will now unconditionally open it to the right of the source tab (Always open duplicated tabs next to source tab #20565) (thanks OmarMashal (@OmarMashal0)!)
• On newer versions of Windows, Terminal will use faster APIs to query the app catalog to find fragment extensions (tsm: use the much cheaper & non-async 26100 AppExtension APIs when possible #20356)
• Our build system now requires Visual Studio 2026 and Windows SDK 10.0.26100 (Move to Visual Studio 2026, SDK 26100 and toolset v145 #20225) (Remove PreferredToolArchitecture override now that we require VS 2026 #20518) (build: move OneBranch to WS 2025 VS 2026 #20609)
• Panes can no longer be reduced below 2 cells in either direction, to prevent screen corruption (Prevent panes from shrinking below 2x2 cells #20564) (thanks zhangxaochen!)
• Tab Search will now "preview" which tab you are about to jump to while you're searching (Preview the selected tab in tabSearch too #20256)
• Terminal will now cause DWM.exe to use less memory per Terminal window! (Using WS_EX_NOREDIRECTIONBITMAP disables the GDI redirection surface … #20655) (thanks Yexuan Xiao (@YexuanXiao)!)
• The "Open New Window" action has been improved to make it impervious to app execution alias failures (i.e. wt.exe being corrupted) (Convert the Open New Window handler to an event #20311)
• The console will no longer emit WINDOW_EVENT events when a VT application enters or leaves the Alternate Screen Buffer (Avoid window events during ASB #20617)
• The info bar exhorting you to please not disable the "Touch, Keyboard, and Handwriting Input Service" has been removed (Remove the Input Service warning and almost all traces of it #20633)
• The soft reset (DECSTR) control sequence now works like xterm does when the alternate screen buffer is in use (Fix DECSTR cursor restore in alt screen buffer (#19918) #20032) (thanks aarushi singh (@aarushisingh04)!)
• The support for OSC 7 which was announced in version 1.25, and then removed, has likewise been removed from 1.26
• We are rolling out runtime changes to improve our code quality; however, that rollout is currently restricted to the Dev channel (local builds) (Canary: enable STL hardening and destructor tombstoning in all builds #20544)
• We got rid of the "new tab" animation, as it made the application appear slower (Removing new tab animation #20543)
• We have expanded our "built-in glyph" support to cover a large portion of the new Unicode "Symbols for Legacy Computing" block (we now cover U+1FB00 through U+1FB94, all sextants, filled triangles and trapezoids, and eighth blocks) (Add built-in glyphs for the first 149 "Symbols for Legacy Computing" #20424)
• We have laid the groundwork for "per-window settings", which in the future will allow you to specify a different theme, profile, etc. for each Window or Workspace (Prepare for per-window settings #20328)
• We have made some changes under the hood to prepare for merging our "Terminal control" codebases (Core, Interactivity: allow our creator to provide a DispatcherQueue #20713) (Move MIDI audio timer off Dispatcher to a threadpool #20711) (core, atlas: properly handle no-swapchain-handle situations #20722) (Move PointerId, focus and in-bounds handling down into Interactivity #20017)
• We have renamed the (somewhat confusing, probably) "New Tab Menu" settings page to "Dropdown", and redesigned it to be (somewhat, maybe) easier to use (Redesign new tab menu page -> dropdown #20203)
• We will now show an overlay indicating the size in character cells of the window when you resize Terminal (Show terminal size overlay during resize #20059) (thanks Sagar (@sagarbhure-msft)!)
• When you close a tab, Terminal will now unconditionally jump to the previously most recently used tab (Always use MRU tab focus on tab close regardless of TabSwitcherMode #20272) (thanks Anshika Jain (@Anshikakalpana)!)
• You can now customize what delimiter is used when you drop multiple files on a Terminal pane; JSON setting dragDropDelimiter (string, default is a single U+0020 space) (Add setting for customizable delimiter for file drag-and-drop #19799) (thanks Vallabh Mahajan (@Vallabh-1504)!)

Bug Fixes

• IME candidate windows will no longer be positioned incorrectly when Terminal is maximized (Report the IME caret rect relative to the client area #20627) (thanks Genki (@9enki)!)
• Terminal will no longer send arrow key inputs (and others) in the middle of an IME composition (Deliver a finished composition before the key that ended it #20471) (thanks sanguneo (@sanguneo)!)
• Custom shaders which depend on the time parameter will no longer experience an early rollover (Fix integer overflow in custom shader Time calculation #20360) (thanks Shivam Kumar (@Zish19)!)
• A completely empty terminal pane or console window will no longer try to commit the first 128 rows of the buffer to memory (avoid committing rows just to figure out rendition, blink and cursor #19984)
• Errors displayed in the Settings page will now be more visible in high contrast mode (Fix settings error text legibility in High Contrast mode #20098) (thanks Sushaanth Srinivasan (@SushaanthSrinivasan)!)
• Media paths referring to icon resources such as foo.exe,-1 will once again work (Fix indexed icon media resource resolution #20572) (thanks arista-ms!)
• Terminal should no longer leak memory with some graphics adapters when you are scrolled back into history or experience rendering lag after the machine resumes from sleep (Fix several Present issues in AtlasEngine #20723)
• Terminal will no longer stay open indefinitely with no windows open if it has been asked to host an incoming session that terminated early (Implement 5s timeout for ConPTY handoff embedding. #20051) (thanks kuldeep kumar (@Kuldeep2822k)!)
• The "action name" input field will no longer try to convince you that you hadn't changed anything (Fix action name inconsistently updating in Edit Action page #20455)
• The "Open Current Working Directory" action will no longer attempt to open non-directories (Only open File Explorer from OpenCWD when CWD is a real directory #20697) (thanks Sebastien Tardif (@SebTardif)!)
• The font face selector in the settings UI will no longer cause Terminal to undergo rapid unscheduled disassembly (Fix font face keyboard selection crash #20255) (thanks Danyal Ahmed (@danyalahmed1995)!)
  • ... it will also no longer instantly forget what you put in it (Preserve selected font face after focus changes #20359) (thanks Danyal Ahmed (@danyalahmed1995)!)
• The JSON settings schema has been updated to include persistedLayoutAndContent as a valid option for firstWindowPreference (schema: Add persistedLayoutAndContent and description #20475) (thanks doterik!)
• We now use a lighter-weight API to play sounds when "bell sounds" are enabled (Use PlaySound for custom bell audio to preserve mixer volume (#17733) #20031) (thanks aarushi singh (@aarushisingh04)!)
• We now use the most recent Azure Cloud Shell API version, which ensures that you can still access your Cloud Shells (Upgrade Cloud Shell API to 2025-09-01-preview #20620) (thanks Mitchell Bifeld (@mbifeld)!)
• We've fixed some visual artifacts experienced by users of the "QQ Wubi" IME (Fix visual artifacts when using QQ Wubi IME #20542)

Reliability

• XBOX controllers will no longer cause Terminal to shuffle off this mortal coil (Fixes xbox controller crashing the Terminal #20234) (thanks Phil Scott (@phil-scott-78)!)
• We will take fewer trips to a farm upstate when you use "terminal pane" shortcuts on the Settings, Markdown or Snippets UI (Guard and tidy a couple instances of GetActiveTerminalControl #20458)
• The experimental "reposition mouse cursor with click" settings will now result in fewer "bucket-kicking" events (Clamp the cursor position in bounds during "reposition with click" #20442)

VT Support

• An application initiating an OSC 52 clipboard write at the same time as a title change will no longer experience a 5-second hang (Fix 5s lags when using OSC 52 clipboard copy #20728)
• A VT soft reset (DECSTR) will no longer result in the uploaded soft font (DRCS) being cleared (Preserve the DRCS font when performing a soft reset #20607) (thanks James Holderness (@j4james)!)
• Kitty Keyboard Protocol: auto-repeat events now work properly (Fix KKP auto-repeat events #20500)
• Kitty Keyboard Protocol: dead keys and numpad Enter now work properly (Fix two KKP ReportEventTypes issues #20551)
• Kitty Keyboard Protocol: non-ASCII keys, modifier repeats and AltGr keys now work properly (Fix various KKP encoding issues #20052)

Console Hosting

• ConPTY will no longer retry its cursor position request when the hosting application does not answer it (Do not retry a DSR-CPR if the ConPTY host did not respond #20510)
• ConPTY will no longer wait for a DA1 response before finishing initialization (ConPTY: Do not wait for DA1 on startup #20536)

Miscellaneous (console host, build systems, code health)

• conhost: headless console applications no longer spawn a useless render thread (Only run the render thread for headed console apps #19986)
• conhost: we now always use the "cls" detector to prevent screen clearing from committing the entire (virtualized) text buffer (Always use the cls shim for cmd/pwsh #19957)
• Our release engineering process now supports uploading our NuGet packages to GitHub (Draft-TerminalReleases: add nuget package support, remove asset hashes #20061)
• The "restart session" menu item on each tab will now be disabled if there is no session to restart (Tab menu: show "restart" + maintain items' enable state #19972)
• We've streamlined how we handle word-wise selection and navigation; this should result in no user-facing issues but 🤷 (Simplify word expansion functions #19882)

With additional documentation, build system, schema, and code health fixes thanks to Tushar (@tusharsnx), MichaelK (@MichaelK05-dev), BamBamTram32, Alimkhan Slambek (@slambek), Raza Khan (@raza-khan0108), nsfxdyj, Dinah Xiaoman G (@DinahK-2SO), nsfxdyj, Winston Liu (@winstliu), and 盗天叔叔 (@1816586742-stack).

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Binary files inside the unpackaged distribution archive bear the version number 1.26.260930004-preview.

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This discussion was created from the release Windows Terminal Preview v1.26.2734.0.