Windows Terminal is a product that was announced at Build two years ago, and hit general availability at Build last year. It's only natural that there are some new features to share for the application in Build 2021 with Windows Terminal 1.9.

Microsoft is releasing the preview version of the update today. The most notable new feature is called Quake Mode, and it's unclear why it's actually called that. Quake Mode lets you open Terminal from anywhere by using a keyboard shortcut.

With this, you can also set it as the default terminal now. That means that all command-line apps launch in Windows Terminal, and it should work from context menus as well.

That's the key new feature for Windows Terminal 1.9. It's not a major update or anything. Presumably, there will be a whole bunch of new features whenever Windows Terminal 2.0 arrives.

One other feature that Microsoft touted was the new settings UI in Windows Terminal, something that's already included in the open-source app. Previously, you had to edit a JSON file to change your settings.

Aside from Windows Terminal 1.9, there are a few new features that Microsoft called out. In the Windows Subsystem for Linux, GUI apps are now supported, along with GPU acceleration. This is something that has been in preview with Windows Insiders for a little while though.

https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/9n0dx20hk701