Windows terminal set font

On Windows 11 or 10, the Windows Terminal app comes with a predefined set of customization settings, including the “Cascadia Mono” as the default font on every profile.

However, changing the default font face to anything you want is possible. For example, if you prefer the “Consolas” font, the original default for Command Prompt, or any other font face available on your device with the settings UI or the “settings.json” file.

This guide will teach you how to change the default font face for the Windows Terminal app on Windows 11 or 10.

• Change default Windows Terminal font face with settings UI
• Change default Windows Terminal font face with settings.json

Change default Windows Terminal font face with settings UI

To change the default font face with the settings UI, use these steps:

1. Open Windows Terminal.

2. Use the Shift +  Ctrl + , (comma) keyboard shortcut to open the settings UI.

3. Click on Defaults.

4. Click the Appearance tab.

5. Under the “Text” section, use the “Font face” setting and type the name of the style – for example, Consolas.

   

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6. Click the Save button in the bottom-right corner.

Once you complete the steps, the new font style will apply immediately to every profile configured on the Windows Terminal.

Configure default specific profile font face

To change the font style for a specific command-line tool, use these steps:

1. Open Windows Terminal.

2. Use the Shift +  Ctrl + , (comma) keyboard shortcut to open the settings UI.

3. Click on the profile to change the settings — for example, Windows PowerShell or Command Prompt.

4. Click the Appearance tab.

5. Under the “Text” section, use the “Font face” setting and type the name of the style – for example, Consolas.

   

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6. Click the Save button.

After you complete the steps, only the command-line tool you configured will start using the new font family.

Change default Windows Terminal font face with settings.json

To set a new default font face for the terminal with the settings.json file, use these steps:

1. Open Windows Terminal.

2. Use the Ctrl + Alt + , (comma) keyboard shortcut to open the settings.json file with the default code editor.

   Quick tip: It is recommended to use Visual Studio Code. You can also open the file by clicking the menu (down-arrow) button next to the tab and selecting the Settings option.

3. Under the “profiles” section, inside the “defaults” brackets, type the following command to change the font face:

   "fontFace": "Consolas"

   

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   In the command, make sure to change the Consolas for the name of the font style you want to use.

   Quick tip: If you have more than one line of code inside the bracket, ensure all the lines end with a comma (,) except for the last line. Otherwise, the settings may not save correctly. You can find the name of all the available font faces on Settings > Personalization > Fonts.

4. Use the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut to save the file.

After you complete the steps, the font settings will apply automatically.

Configure default specific profile font face

To specify a new font style for a command-line tool with the settings.json file, use these steps:

1. Open Windows Terminal.

2. Use the Ctrl + Alt + , (comma) keyboard shortcut to open the settings.json file with the default code editor.

3. Under the “profiles” section, inside the brackets of the profile you want to update, type the following command to change the font face:

   "fontFace": "Consolas"

   

   Картинка с сайта: pureinfotech.com

   In the command, make sure to change the Consolas for the name of the font style you want to use.

   Quick tip: If you have more than one line of code inside the bracket, ensure all the lines end with a comma (,) except for the last line. Otherwise, the settings may not save correctly.

4. Use the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut to save the file.

Once you complete the steps, only the profile you configured will start using the new font family.

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Windows Terminal is a modern terminal application for developers who frequently uses command-line tools such as Powershell. In this article, I’ll show you how to customize the hell out of Windows Terminal and Powershell so that you can flex on your friends and colleagues 😎.

Here’s our final result 👇

Картинка с сайта: dev.to

Before we begin, please download Windows Terminal from the Microsoft Store.

Table of Contents:

• Windows Terminal Settings
• Oh My Posh
• Winfetch

Windows Terminal Settings

You can open settings via the Ctrl+, shortcut or the dropdown menu:

Картинка с сайта: dev.to

Color Scheme

My color scheme is a slightly modified version of Sonokai Shusia. To install the color scheme:

1. Open Settings in Windows Terminal and press the “Open JSON file” button at the bottom left corner. It will open settings.json in Notepad.

2. In settings.json, scroll down to find the "schemes" field, which accepts an array of color scheme objects. Next, paste in my color scheme object before the first object in the array (note that object order does not matter).

   {
      ...
      "schemes":
      [
          {
              "name": "Sonokai Shusia",
              "background": "#2D2A2E",
              "black": "#1A181A",
              "blue": "#1080D0",
              "brightBlack": "#707070",
              "brightBlue": "#22D5FF",
              "brightCyan": "#7ACCD7",
              "brightGreen": "#A4CD7C",
              "brightPurple": "#AB9DF2",
              "brightRed": "#F882A5",
              "brightWhite": "#E3E1E4",
              "brightYellow": "#E5D37E",
              "cursorColor": "#FFFFFF",
              "cyan": "#3AA5D0",
              "foreground": "#E3E1E4",
              "green": "#7FCD2B",
              "purple": "#7C63F2",
              "red": "#F82F66",
              "selectionBackground": "#FFFFFF",
              "white": "#E3E1E4",
              "yellow": "#E5DE2D"
         },
         ...
     ]
   }
   

3. Save your changes and head back to Windows Terminal. Go to Settings → «Windows Powershell» profile → «Appearance» tab → «Color Scheme», and choose the new color scheme. Then, press «Save».

   

   Картинка с сайта: dev.to

If you don’t like my custom theme, check out Windows Terminal Themes website. There are 200+ themes to choose from and you get a quick preview of each theme 🌈.

Nerd Font

Nerd Fonts refer to programming fonts that are patched with a high number of glyphs (icons). Using a nerd font in Windows Terminal is essential because normal monospace fonts cannot render icons properly:

Картинка с сайта: dev.to

It’s likely that the programming font you’re using (eg. Cascadia Code, Fira Code) already has a Nerd Font version. Check out this link to see the full list of patched Nerd Fonts that you can install.

In my setup, I use Fira Code Nerd Font. The link will download a ZIP file that contains many TrueType font files. It’s OK to only install the files where the name looks something like Fira Code XXXXX Nerd Font Complete Windows Compatible.

After installing Nerd Font:

1. Restart your Windows Terminal by closing and re-opening it.
2. Go to Settings → “Windows Powershell” profile → “Appearance” tab → “Font face”, and choose your newly installed Nerd Font:
   

   Картинка с сайта: dev.to

Now, your Terminal should look a bit more pleasing to the eyes:

Картинка с сайта: dev.to

Oh My Posh

Oh My Posh is a prompt theme engine that lets you beautify the prompt string. This engine requires your Terminal to use a Nerd Font so make sure that you followed along the previous steps.

Setup

1. Install “App Installer” from Microsoft Store to get the winget Windows Package Manager CLI.

   • ⚠ Requires Windows 10 1809 (build 17763) or later
   • Check out Oh My Posh’s documentation for alternative installation options.

2. Restart your Windows Terminal and run winget to check if the package manager is correctly installed.

3. In your Windows Terminal, run

   winget install JanDeDobbeleer.OhMyPosh
   

4. Restart your Windows Terminal. Next, try running oh-my-posh in Powershell to see if it’s correctly installed.

   

   Картинка с сайта: dev.to

5. Run the following command to open your Powershell profile.

   notepad $PROFILE
   

   If notepad shows a prompt saying that “Microsoft.Powershell_profile.ps1” is not found and asks if you would like to create the file, press “Yes” to create the file.

6. Inside the file, paste in the following code and save the file. This will load Oh My Posh on start-up with the default theme.

   oh-my-posh --init --shell pwsh --config ~/AppData/Local/Programs/oh-my-posh/themes/jandedobbeleer.omp.json | Invoke-Expression
   

7. Restart your Terminal. Your Powershell should now load Oh My Posh automatically

   

   Картинка с сайта: dev.to

Change Theme

Oh My Posh comes with >70 themes included out-of-the-box. Check out the “Themes” page documentation for a gallery of preinstalled themes.

All themes are located in ~\AppData\Local\Programs\oh-my-posh\themes if you used winget to install Oh My Posh. If you used an alternative installation method, visit the documentation and select your installation method to see where the themes are located.

Suppose you want to use the powerlevel10k_rainbow preinstalled theme:

1. Open Windows Terminal and run notepad $PROFILE in Powershell just like we did previously.

2. In the opened file, change the path after --config so that it uses powerlevel10k_rainbow.omp.json:

   oh-my-posh --init --shell pwsh --config ~/AppData/Local/Programs/oh-my-posh/themes/powerlevel10k_rainbow.omp.json | Invoke-Expression
   

3. Restart your Terminal:

   

   Картинка с сайта: dev.to

Custom Themes

You can easily create your own theme by writing your own JSON files. Here are some useful links:

• “Configuration → General” page of the docs — Learn how to create custom themes
• Nerd Font’s cheatsheet — List of different glyphs that you can use

I created a custom theme called p10k_classic, which is inspired by a preinstalled theme called powerlevel10k_classic.

To use my theme:

1. Visit the GitHub Gist link and click the “Download ZIP” button at the top right corner.

2. Extract p10k_classic.omp.json into a location of your choice. For example, let’s place it in the root folder (~).

3. Open Windows Terminal and run notepad $PROFILE in Powershell.

4. In the opened file, change the path after --config so that it uses ~/p10k_classic.omp.json

   oh-my-posh --init --shell pwsh --config ~/p10k_classic.omp.json | Invoke-Expression
   

5. Restart your Terminal:

   

   Картинка с сайта: dev.to

Winfetch

As an added bonus, we’ll install winfetch, a command-line tool that prints out system information. This is a great alternative to neofetch, which only works on Linux.

Setup

This wiki page lists several ways to install winfetch. We’re using the first recommended method: PSGallery.

1. Run Windows Terminal as administrator. To do that, search “Windows Terminal” in the Start Menu, right click the item, and press “Run as administrator”

   

   Картинка с сайта: dev.to

2. In Powershell, run the command:

   Install-Script -Name pwshfetch-test-1
   

   Choose “Yes” for any prompts you encountered.

3. Run notepad $PROFILE to open Powershell profile. Add the following line of code at the end:

   Set-Alias winfetch pwshfetch-test-1
   

4. Restart your Terminal. Then, run winfetch to see if it’s correctly installed.

   

   Картинка с сайта: dev.to

The default winfetch config is saved to ~\.config\winfetch\config.ps1. Check out the “Configuration” wiki page to see all available configuration options.

Custom Image

The Windows logo at the left can be changed to a custom “image” (more like a low resolution pixel art because Windows Terminal cannot render full resolution images).

For example, I want to display my GitHub profile picture, which is a 8-bit Luigi art:

1. Save this image and place it in a location of your choice. For example, I save it at the root folder (~) with the name luigi.png.

2. Open ~\.config\winfetch\config.ps1 in Notepad. Change the first two variables to the following:

   # ===== WINFETCH CONFIGURATION =====
   
   $image = "C:\Users\User\luigi.png"  # ABSOLUTE path
   $noimage = $false
   

   ⚠ I used absolute path in $image because winfetch in my PC is having trouble processing a relative path (~/luigi.png). The full path of my root folder is C:\Users\User.

3. Save the file and run winfetch in Powershell:

   

   Картинка с сайта: dev.to

More Configuration

By default, winfetch only shows information about your C drive. To show all available drives, open ~\.config\winfetch\config.ps1 and uncomment the field:

# Configure which disks are shown
# $ShowDisks = @("C:", "D:")
# Show all available disks
$ShowDisks = @("*")

You can also display a bar chart for the memory (RAM) and disk usage:

# Configure how to show info for levels
# Default is for text only.
# 'bar' is for bar only.
# 'textbar' is for text + bar.
# 'bartext' is for bar + text.
# $cpustyle = 'bar'
$memorystyle = 'bartext'
$diskstyle = 'bartext'
# $batterystyle = 'bartext'

Here’s our final result:

Картинка с сайта: dev.to

That’s all the steps you needed to beautify your Terminal 🌈. Now it’s time for you to show off in front of your friends and colleagues! 😁

Thanks for reading! If you find it useful, don’t forget to like and share this post 🙌

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• Personal website