How to Install Windows Terminal in Windows 10

Microsoft has developed an open-source Terminal called Windows Terminal based on the popular open-source Terminal console that is available in all the variants of Linux. They have made it a little different as you can use PowerShell Core through it easily. Windows Terminal is available only on Windows 10 and can be installed through Microsoft Store app. But if you want full control on what is being installed then you can manually install Windows Terminal in the following manner:

  1. Install Microsoft Visual C++ Runtimes 2019 in your Windows PC. You can use All-in-one VC++ Redistributable Runtimes Package to install these or can download them from Microsoft’s website.All-in-one VC++ Runtimes
  2. Install Desktop Bridge VC++ v14 Redistributable package from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53175.
  3. Download the latest version of Windows Terminal from https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/releases. You have to expand Assets section to find the download link for the “.msixbundle” file.
  4. Double-click on the downloaded “.msixbundle” file to launch the App Installer which will take you through the installation steps of the app. Basically, you have to click on the Install button.Windows Terminal
  5. An alternative to the above step is to use PowerShell. For this, open the folder where downloaded “.msixbundle”  is saved. Click on File Explorer’s File menu and then select Open Windows PowerShell as administrator. In the PowerShell, give command Add-AppPackage -path ‘.\Microsoft.WindowsTerminalPreview_1.1.1812.0_8wekyb3d8bbwe.msixbundle’ – obviously you have to change the file name to the version you downloaded.Windows Terminal
  6. When installation has finished, you can launch Windows Terminal from Start by clicking on the Start button and looking for “Windows Terminal”.

These steps for manual installation of Windows Terminal are also great for the users who are unable to install it through the Microsoft Store app for one reason or another. For example, even if you are not able to download any apps from Microsoft Store and it is throwing up an error then you can just download Windows Terminal from its GitHub page and follow the above mentioned steps to install it yourself.

Windows Terminal

Windows Terminal has a tabbed user interface and you can use either PowerShell, cmd.exe or Azure Cloud Shell in these tabs. It makes use of PowerShell Core 7.0 which can also be installed in Windows using our guide – installing PowerShell Core 7.0 in Windows 10.

2 comments

  1. After following the steps the .msixbundle still doesn’t have an application associated with the file type. Is there something I’m supposed to be selecting when it asks, “How do you want to open this file”?

    1. In that case, you can use the PowerShell method (step 5).
      You an also choose “App Installer” app when it asks Open with.

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