The New Terminal and how to change the background.

Hey Guys

Its been a minute since i put out something but here goes nothing.

If you are a Techie by now you know that Microsoft has released a New Terminal

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

The Terminal is a new tool where you can access the traditional comand line, PowerShell, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and the Azure CLI. While developers have been able to compile and use the Windows Terminal from the code available on GitHub, Microsoft is now releasing an easy installer through the Windows Store.

The Windows Terminal app includes multiple tab support, alongside themes and customization for developers who want to tweak the Terminal app. You’ll need to edit a JSON file if you want to get to all of the customization options right now, as this early preview doesn’t have full functionality. Microsoft has some instructions on how to configure your settings and key binds in the JSON file.

Changing the Background

You can change the background to any type of image file you like—a PNG, a JPEG, or even an animated GIF.

To change the background of any of the shells, you’ll first need to place the image file in a location the Terminal App can read. Windows Terminal is a Univeral Windows Platform (UWP) app, so it prefers to use its own AppData folder. AppData is a folder you usually find in the User Profile and is used for storing program settings. UWP apps create a custom AppData folder and use that instead. Windows Terminal’s AppData folder is located in:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\RoamingState

Just copy that into File Explorer’s path bar and hit Enter; you’ll be taken to the correct location. Place your image files here, and Windows Terminal can use them for backgrounds.

Open Settings in Windows Terminal, and scroll to the profile you want to change. There are several profiles under the ”  "profiles" : ” section. Each corresponds to an option in the menu: Cmd, PowerShell, Linux distros, and so on. You can tell which is which by examining the ” commandline ” or ” name ” line in each section.

To change the background image for one of these sections, under the "icon" line, add the following lines:

"backgroundImage" : "ms-appdata:///roaming/image.jpg",
"backgroundImageOpacity" : 0.75,
"backgroundImageStrechMode" : "fill",

Where “image.jpg” is the name of your image or gif file. Make sure every line in the section—except the last one—ends with a comma.

Save the file, and your changes should show up immediately, even with the Windows Terminal open.

There are some interesting updates coming soon so keep an eye out.

Let me know what you think.