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Windows Terminal Is Sexy

Updated: May 8, 2023



Windows Terminal


Introduction

As a part of my Terminals Are Sexy series, I wanted to take some time to improve my windows devices. I use windows for my work mostly because I need the graphics cards for GPU processing and developing 3d game assets so I wanted to take the time to make my environment as enjoyable as possible. The steps below is the beginning of my environment setup and hope it can help others enjoy using terminal in windows as well.


Install Windows Terminal


After looking around online for a terminal emulator like iTerm2, I ended up stumbling on Windows Terminal and found it perfect to start working from. It allows connection to several different types of UNIX and terminal interfaces like CMD, PowerShell, git-bash, and any installed Linux kernels installed on your system.


To get started, install windows terminal for the Microsoft store. Use the link below to get straight to it. https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/windows-terminal/9N0DX20HK701


Next attach the Windows Terminal to your taskbar. The easiest way to bind the Windows terminal to a keyboard shortcut is to pin it to the task bar and press the Win key plus the number corresponding to the position of the program on the taskbar. For example, Win + 2 launches or focuses the terminal window on my computer. You can also link it to a global command in using the windows terminal JSON setting file.



Personalization


One of the first thing was go into the profile applications i don't want to see and set their setting to hidden. I choose PowerShell as my main profile and hid the rest of my options.


Next I went into the PowerShell settings and started to customize how the terminal looks.

I selected one of my sticker images and started to work backwards. First I went to the settings and changed the icon to the selected image, then used the same image in my background. I set the transparency pretty low so it didn't interfere being able to read text.



The next setting I went and changed was to make the terminal transparent and acrylic. You can select whichever settings you enjoy using and feel free to play around fro what works for you.




The other settings I changed included:

  • Change Tab Title (I made this into my gamer tag for fun)

  • Made sure the terminal runs in admin mode

  • Changed the color scheme to "One Half Dark"


You can add color schemes simply by going to the color scheme tab in settings, create new ones yourself which is easy or you can use different ones you can find online.

Here are some example websites you can search through: https://windowsterminalthemes.dev/



Scoop


Scoop is a package installer for windows. I use this inside of my PowerShell and it's great for UNIX users that is similar to Home Brew for Mac OS.


To install, go into PowerShell and enter

iwr -useb get.scoop.sh | iex

iwr stands for Invoke Web Request. It starts a session and allows you to download things off the internet.


If you get a execution error try the command below:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -scope CurrentUser

If you need to uninstall scoop for any reason you can use the command below:

scoop uninstall scoop.


Oh My Posh



OhMyPosh is a prompt theme engine for the shell. I use this so I'll go into more detail here. Some users like Starship so worth having a look if you want to check out different options.


https://ohmyposh.dev/



To Install run the command below:

scoop install https://github.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh/releases/latest/download/oh-my-posh.json

The next step that is needed is to download a font from Nerd Font. These fonts are needed to run the plugin otherwise you will have a broken prompt and not be able to show the text and images. You can find the fonts in the link below. I chose to use "3270 Condensed NFM".


Nerd Font:


Customization



First thing you need to do is make sure to create a Profile to for PowerShell. You can run this command to generate it:

ew-Item -Path $PROFILE -Type File -Force

Once you have the PROFILE file, you can open and edit it by using the command:

notepad $PROFILE

Add the line below to the profile.

oh-my-posh init pwsh | Invoke-Expression

Finally run the command below to activate the current settings in the PROFILE

. $PROFILE

Now we finally have everything connected and in place we can finally find a theme to add to On My Posh you can find some of the themes here: https://ohmyposh.dev/docs/themes

I'm using the blueish theme, but there are so many great ones you can use.


To set a new config/theme you need to change the --config option of the

"oh-my-posh init <shell>" line in your profile or the ".<shell>rc" script.


Here is an example to use a URL of a theme listed above. 

oh-my-posh init pwsh --config 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh/main/themes/jandedobbeleer.omp.json' | Invoke-Expression

Now you should have a great setup for both the Windows Terminal view and have a unique prompt theme.



Terminal Icons



This is a interesting package to add icons to folders and files inside of the terminal. To install, run the line below in the terminal. 


Install-Module -Name Terminal-Icons -Repository PSGallery

Once you have that installed, go into the profile file and add this line. I had to restart my terminal before I could see the changes.

Import-Module -Name Terminal-Icons


Predictive IntelliSense


The last tool we will present in this tutorial will try to predict the terminal command you want to run and will help you based off of previous history to run certain processes. Start by running the line below:

Install-Module PSReadLine -AllowPrerelease -Force

Finally go back into the PROFILE file and add these lines to the document and restart the terminal.

Import-Module PSReadLine

Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionSource History
Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionViewStyle ListView
Set-PSReadLineOption -EditMode Windows

Finally run . $PROFILE and you should be able to test it out.


Conclusion

This should be a great start to getting your Windows devices more interactive and fun to work with. I found doing these steps above has really helped me enjoy working inside the terminal inside of windows and hope it gives you the same feeling. Feel free to reach out and share if this tutorial was helpful and if there are certain features or help that would be useful to be placed in this tutorial.

This blog is a continuation of the Terminals Are Sexy series and plan to continue to the series with more updates. Feel free to check out the original post which teaches how to set up an interactive terminal inside of Mac OS. https://skylarcastator.editorx.io/mysite/post/terminals-are-sexy





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