You can already customize the colors, font, and other parts of the Windows Terminal, but starting with the next update, the changes will be easier to swap and share. Windows Terminal 1.16, which is now in Preview, introduces a new “themes” global property in the Terminal settings. Each theme can have a name and customizations to the window, tabs, tab row, and active tab. The settings are defined as a simple JSON object, so it’s easy to copy them between computers or share with others.

There are a few other visual updates in Terminal 1.16. The dark theme is now the default, instead of the active Windows system theme. Microsoft has also enabled the “Atlas Engine” by default, which renders text in Windows Terminal with DirectX 3D acceleration. That feature was introduced earlier this year, but it had enough bugs and performance issues that rolling it out to everyone was delayed until now. Microsoft says the new engine is “supports additional pixel shaders (including the retro effect), bold text, and underline/overline/hyperlink lines.”

The 1.16 update is available now in the Windows Terminal Preview app on the Microsoft Store. Once all the bugs are ironed out, it will roll out to the main Windows Terminal app, which is preinstalled on Windows 11 (and will soon be the default terminal on 11).

Source: Microsoft