For developers or anyone who uses Windows Terminal to interact with the shell, be it PowerShell or WSL, this tutorial will help you customize the Terminal, which soon the default command-line experience in Windows 11. Using a popular prompt theme engine called Oh My Posh, you can make your shell look beautiful with icons, glyphs, colors, and more. i have to thank Scott Hanselman, which demonstrated all the details about customizing the Windows Terminal in Windows 10/11 and making it look interesting. So, without further delay, let’s get started and learn how to customize Windows Terminal in Windows 10/11.
Customize Windows Terminal Like a Pro (2022)
We have detailed instructions to customize Windows Terminal ranging from adding the acrylic effect to applying the Caskaydia font to your command line experience. We’ve added steps for both PowerShell and Ubuntu (WSL). You can expand the table below and go to any section you want.
Apply Acrylic Effect to Windows Terminal in Windows 10/11
1. First, open Microsoft Store and Update Windows Terminal to the latest version.
2. Then open Windows Terminal and go to Settings.
3. Go here to “Windows PowerShell” under “Profiles” in the left sidebar and switch to the “Appearancetab.
4. Scroll down and enable the “Acrylicswitch. At the bottom right, you can also adjust the acrylic opacity. I kept it at 70%, but you can set the value to your liking. Finally, click “Save” to confirm the changes. You have successfully made your first step to customize the Windows Terminal.
5. Repeat the process for CMD, WSL, and other shells you use on your Windows computer. It adds an acrylic effect to the Windows Terminal.
Add Caskaydia Cove Font to Windows Terminal
1. After adding the acrylic effect, you need to install fonts compatible with Oh My Posh. i installed Caskaydia Cove Nerd Font, which works well with this third-party customization tool. You can click here to download the font.
2. After downloading the font, extract it with apps like 7Zip or WinZip, and install all fonts. You can select all fonts -> right click on it -> Show more options -> Install for all users.
3. Now open Windows Terminal and go to Settings. Here, switch to the “Windows PowerShell” section in the left pane and go to the “Appearancetab just like we did above.
4. Here, choose the newly downloaded font that you want to use with the Oh My Posh prompt. I chose “Caskaydia Cove Nerd Font“. Now click on “Save”.
5. Repeat this process for all shells you use on Windows 10/11, including WSL/Ubuntu.
Customize PowerShell in Windows Terminal with Oh My Posh
1. Now that you’ve added the acrylic effect and applied a compatible font, it’s time to install the Oh My Posh prompt. To do this, open Windows Terminal with administrator rights. To do that, search for Terminal after pressing the Windows key and click on the “Open as administrator” option in the right pane.
2. Go to the PowerShell window and run the command below to install the Oh My Posh prompt. post that, press “A” and press Enter to allow the installation.
Install-Module oh-my-posh -Scope CurrentUser
3. Then run the command below to: import the Oh My Posh profile. When prompted, press “A” followed by “Enter” to continue with the installation.
Import-Module oh-my-posh
4. After that you should: install Terminal icons. shout at Brandon Olin, who developed Terminal Icons for PowerShell. Just run the command below and let the installation complete. Make sure you are using Windows Terminal with administrator privileges before running this command.
Install-Module -Name Terminal-Icons -Repository PSGallery
5. Now to check if everything works fine then run the command below. This will display the new prompt.
oh-my-posh --init --shell pwsh --config ~/jandedobbeleer.omp.json | Invoke-Expression
6. So far everything works fine, but you need to make Oh My Posh your default custom prompt. To do this, run the command below. It gives you a path, which you should write down or copy and paste into Notepad.
$PROFILE
7. Then navigate to that path and you will find a file “Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1”. Open it with Notepad, add the lines below and save the file. Now you can close the Notepad file.
Set-PoshPrompt -Theme jandedobbeleer Import-Module -Name Terminal-Icons
Remark: If the Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 file does not exist in that location, follow the next step.
8. If the ps1 file is not there, you can easily create one. Right-click in the “WindowsPowerShell” folder and choose New -> Text Document.
9. Rename it to Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1. Make sure there is no .txt extension at the end. The file name must end with .ps1.
10. Now open the file with Notepad and add the two lines below and save it. You can now close Notepad.
Set-PoshPrompt -Theme jandedobbeleer Import-Module -Name Terminal-Icons
11. Go back to the PowerShell window and run the command below to: reload the profile.
. $PROFILE
12. Finally, close Windows Terminal and open it again. You will now see that Oh My Posh is set as the default prompt in PowerShell. With the acrylic effect, new fonts, icons, glyphs and the Oh My Posh prompt, PowerShell in Windows Terminal looks nice.
Customize WSL/Ubuntu in Windows Terminal with Oh My Posh
Once you’ve added the acrylic effect and installed the fonts, it’s time to customize WSL with Oh My Posh. Here’s how to do it.
1. Open Windows Terminal with administrator rights.
2. Then go to WSL (Ubuntu or any other distro you have installed).
3. Now, before we install Oh My Posh, recommend to update WSL to the latest packages and dependencies. You may need to enter the WSL password to confirm the installation.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
4. After that, run the commands below: one by one to install Oh My Posh in WSL to allow yourself to customize Windows Terminal. You must press “y” to allow the installation.
sudo wget https://github.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh/releases/latest/download/posh-linux-amd64 -O /usr/local/bin/oh-my-posh sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/oh-my-posh
5. Then run the commands below: one by one to download the themes.
mkdir ~/.poshthemes wget https://github.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh/releases/latest/download/themes.zip -O ~/.poshthemes/themes.zip unzip ~/.poshthemes/themes.zip -d ~/.poshthemes chmod u+rw ~/.poshthemes/*.json rm ~/.poshthemes/themes.zip
6. After that, run the command below to check if the custom prompt is installed properly. This should bring up the new Oh My Posh prompt.
eval "$(oh-my-posh --init --shell bash --config ~/.poshthemes/jandedobbeleer.omp.json)"
7. Now run the command below to set Oh My Posh as your default prompt in WSL. It will allow you to edit the Bash config file in Nano editor.
nano ~/.bashrc
8. In the Nano editor, scroll down using the arrow keys on the keyboard and look for this line “make less friendly to non-text input files, see lesspipe(1)”. Right below you have to replace the command starting with “eval…”.
9. Now you need to: type the command below in the Nano editor as copy and paste is not supported. It will look like this:
eval "$(oh-my-posh --init --shell bash --config ~/.poshthemes/jandedobbeleer.omp.json)"
10. Afterwards press “Ctrl + O” and press Enter to save the changes. Then press “Ctrl + X” to exit the Nano editor.
11. Finally, run the command below to: reload the Bash profile. From now on, the WSL will load in the Oh My Posh prompt. Enjoying!
. ~/.bashrc
12. If there are any problems displaying the glyphs and text, make sure you use the correct one Caskaydia Cove Nerd Font for Ubuntu/other distributions on the Windows Terminal Settings page. This is one of the first things you need to adjust in the Windows Terminal.
13. If you are still facing the problem then you should: reload the Bash profile every time you enter the WSL shell. Run the command below and everything will be resolved. You can also restart your PC to check if the problem is fixed.
. ~/.bashrc
Make your Windows terminal look beautiful with Oh My Posh
So that’s how you can customize Windows Terminal and make it look sophisticated and beautiful with icons, glyphs, acrylic effects, and more. As for the Command Prompt, we tried to get it to work with Clink, but it didn’t work. At least that’s all of us. If you want to continue personalize Windows Terminal with themes, background images and colors, follow our linked article. And if you have any questions, let us know in the comments section below.
