Windows Terminal now supports colorful themes to spruce up your dev environment

Microsoft is adding full theme support to its Windows Terminal this week. The customization support allows Windows Terminal users to alter the appearance of tabs, the window, and even background images for the Terminal interface. Microsoft has also tweaked Windows Terminal to always use a dark theme, rather than following the Windows system theme.

Creating themes for Windows Terminal isn’t a simple process unless you’re a developer, though. Themes are only editable using a JSON file, and they’ll appear in the theme dropdown in the settings section of Windows Terminal. Microsoft has provided some sample JSON to get people started, and you’re free to get as creative as you want with a combination of colors and background images.

Microsoft is also modifying the default colors in Windows Terminal “for a more cohesive appearance,” according to Microsoft program manager Kayla Cinnamon. Windows Terminal also has a new text rendering engine underneath, which supports bold text and underline, overline, or hyperlink lines.

“We found that our color schemes page wasn’t the most intuitive and could use a design refresh,” admits Cinnamon. “We’ve updated the settings UI color schemes page to improve its styling and user flow.” You can also choose a color scheme and easily set it as a default now.

Microsoft originally launched Windows Terminal for Windows 10 in 2019, after a surprise announcement that delighted developers at Microsoft’s annual Build conference. It’s now set to be the default command line experience in Windows 11 this year, replacing the existing Windows Console Host.