HOW TO: Customize Windows Terminal w/ Oh My Posh

• Oh My Posh theme
• Custom font
• Custom icons
• Auto-complete & command history

These instructions are based on this video but slightly modified and updated.

Prerequisites

• Go to the Microsoft Store (search for "store" in Windows)

Install Windows Terminal

• Search for "Windows Terminal"
• Install

Install PowerShell

• Search for "PowerShell"
• Install
• (Alternatively you can install it from here)

Install Oh My Posh

• Search for "Oh My Posh"
• Install
• (Alternatively you can install it from here)

1 - Configure Windows Terminal

• Open up Windows Terminal
• Go to Settings
• Click "Open JSON file" in the lower left corner
• Replace the contents of that file with the contents of terminal-settings.json
• Save the file

OR

• Follow the steps below to set it up yourself

1.1 - Set PowerShell as the default profile

• Go to Startup
• Set default profile to PowerShell

1.2 - Set Windows Terminal as the default terminal

• Go to Startup
• Set default terminal application to Windows Terminal

1.3 - Hide other terminals

• Click on Open JSON file
• Go to "profiles"
• Set "hidden" to true for every terminal except PowerShell

1.4 - [OPTIONAL] Modify "new instance behavior"

• Go to Startup
• Set it to "attach to the most recently used window"

2 - Install a compatible font

2.1 - Download a Nerd Font

• Go to the Nerd Fonts website

• Download the Hack Nerd font

• Unzip the folder

• Open up the "Font settings" (search for "fonts" in Windows)

• Drag and drop all the .ttf files from the unzipped hack folder into the "Add fonts" square:

  

2.2 - Set the terminal font in Windows Terminal

• Open up Windows Terminal
• Go to Settings
• Go to Profiles > PowerShell
• Go to Additional Settings > Appearance
• Go to Font face
• Choose Hack Nerd Font, save

2.3 - Set the terminal font in VS Code

• Open up VS Code
• Go to Settings
• Go to Features > Terminal
• Scroll down to Terminal › Integrated: Font Family
• Write "Hack Nerd Font", save and exit

3 - Create a PowerShell profile file

PowerShell will look for a profile file to initialize each time you open the terminal in the path that gets printed if you run his command: echo $profile. This file does not exist by default, so we need to create it.

• To create this file, simply run this command in your terminal New-Item -Path $PROFILE -Type File -Force
• Run the command code $PROFILE to open up the newly created file in VS Code
• Add the command oh-my-posh init pwsh | Invoke-Expression to the file, save
• Refresh your profile by running the command . $PROFILE in the terminal
• Your terminal should now look like this:

• These settings will be automatically initalized whenever you start the terminal from now on

4 - Add an "Oh My Posh" theme

• Open up the PowerShell profile file by running command code $PROFILE in your terminal
• Replace the command you just added with this (adding the --config part):
  • oh-my-posh init pwsh --config "$env:POSH_THEMES_PATH/jandedobbeleer.omp.json" | Invoke-Expression
• If you save and refresh your terminal, you should see that the theme changed
• You can now go to the theme page on the Oh My Posh website and look for whatever theme you want to try
• When you've found one, take the name and replace the "jandedobbeleer" part of the expression above, save, and refresh the terminal
• For example, I like the "amro" theme, so the full expression would be:
  • oh-my-posh init pwsh --config "$env:POSH_THEMES_PATH/amro.omp.json" | Invoke-Expression
• My terminal now looks like this:

• It is also possible to adjust themes if you want to read more about that.

5 - Customize the PowerShell profile

5.1 - Add custom icons to the terminal

• Add the Terminal-Icons package
  • Open your terminal and run the command Install-Module -Name Terminal-Icons
• Go to your profile file (run the command code $PROFILE)
• Under the oh-my-posh init line, add this code:
  • Import-Module -Name Terminal-Icons
• Save and refresh your terminal
• You should now have custom icons in your terminal
• Before:

• After:

5.2 - Add auto-complete and history functionality

• Add the PSReadLine package

  • Open your terminal and run the command Install-Module -Name PSReadLine -AllowPrerelease -Force

• Go to your profile file (run the command code $PROFILE)

• Under the Import-Module line, add this code:

  • Import-Module -Name PSReadLine

• Add these lines under that:

Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionSource History
Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionViewStyle ListView
Set-PSReadLineOption -EditMode Windows

• Save and refresh your terminal
• You should now have auto-complete and see a list of previous commands you've run in the terminal

• The updated profile file should now look the same as Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
  • Note that this profile file also contains a custom GitPrune command that you can choose to keep or not

6 - Updating packages

• To update the version of your installed packages, run this command:

Update-Module -Name {NAME OF PACKAGE}

e.g:

Update-Module -Name PSReadLine
Update-Module -Name Terminal-Icons

• Then press "A" to check the "Yes to All" option if you get this warning:

• You can check what versions of packages you are using by running this command:

Get-InstalledModule

6.1 - Troubleshooting when updating packages

• Even though the process above 👆 should work for updating packages, you might have to do some troubleshooting if it does not:

1. If you are not able to run the command in WT, then try running it in the normal "Command prompt" instead (cmd.exe), potentially starting the program as an administrator if you get any errors related to that
2. If you have updated the package but running the Get-InstalledModule only returns the previous un-updated package version, try this:
   • Go to the folder where PowerShell profile is (echo $profile)
   • Go into the "Modules" folder
   • Go into the folder for the package you are trying to update, there should be multiple folders in here, one for each version
   • Delete the previous version(s)
   • Reload the PS profile
   • Check again using Get-InstalledModule, the updated version should be the one that is being used now