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Windows Terminal configuration

This blog post might be outdated!
This blog post was published more than one year ago and might be outdated!
· 2 min read
Stephan Hochdörfer
Stephan Hochdörfer
Head of IT Business Operations

Windows Terminal is still one of my favorite and most used tools after migrating to Windows and WSL2. Besides using it to access all my WSL2 instances, I also use it to "bookmark" the most needed SSH connections.

After adding some more SSH connections to my Windows Terminal bookmarks, I was wondering if I could somehow visually distinguish between the different connections, especially mark connections to production servers. Just to be sure to be extra careful, you know :)

Indeed that is possible with Windows Terminal. Open the Windows Terminal Settings and then open the JSON configuration file. In the profile section you can configure a tabPanel color for each profile like this:

{
  "profiles": {
    "list": [{
      "bellStyle": "none",
      "commandline": "wsl.exe ssh user@server3",
      "guid": "{f6c91b01-e35f-4ba1-be2f-1040f664e0a3}",
      "hidden": false,
      "icon": "ms-appdata:///roaming/ssh2.png",
      "name": "Server 3",
      "tabColor": "#C52300"
    }]
  }
}

#C52300 is a red color code and perfect to alert me to be careful what I am doing. Once the JSON setting is saved, a new profile will show up in the list of profiles in Windows Terminal: Windows Terminal Profiles

When selecting Server 3 which we defined in the JSON configuration above, the tabPanel color changes to red: Windows Terminal Profile with Red Tab

Problem solved! The only thing I currently still miss is the possibility to group profiles as the list can grow quickly. Luckily, there's an open issue on GitHub already: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1571

UPDATE: Version 1.17 of Windows Terminal Preview added support for dropdown menus.