New Windows 11 update changes default terminal, brings Command Prompt into 21st century

Many of us regular Windows users may not have heard of Windows Terminal, but it’s actually been around since 2019. It was first announced as a new alternative to the Windows Console Host, and is essentially a terminal emulator that can run any command-line tools and apps like Command Prompt and Powershell. However, until now if you opened up Command Prompt it’ll still using the older Console Host.

That will change soon though. Microsoft has announced plans to replace the default terminal emulator on Windows 11 to the newer Windows Terminal. You’d have plenty of reason to do so too, as Windows Terminal offered a number of modern and powerful functions like multiple tabs, Unicode and UTF-8 character support, GPU-accelerated text rendering as well as custom themes and styles.

But for the longest time, Windows users were stuck with Console Host as its default terminal emulator unless they went to the trouble of altering the operating system itself to use a third party terminal. Microsoft knows this, and so Windows 11 will now have the option to set the Windows Terminal as the default terminal emulator. This will affect your command-line tools like Command Prompt. The long term plan, according to Microsoft, is for it to become the default terminal altogether on Windows 11 machines and will do so sometime in 2022.

In the meantime, for those of you on Windows 11 who want to change the default terminal setting to Windows Terminal, it’s actually pretty simple. All you have to do is to open up the Settings app and head over to the ‘Privacy & security’ tab. There, you can select on ‘For developers’, and scroll down where you should see a section for your terminal. You can then change it from Windows Console Host to Windows Terminal.

For more information on Microsoft’s change from Windows Console Host to Windows Terminal, you can check out their blog post on it in Microsoft’s website.