Microsoft tests rendering engine for Windows Terminal

Microsoft has released Windows Terminal Preview 1.13. A text rendering engine can be enabled in this release that should provide better performance in some scenarios. An automatic administrator profile setting has also been added.

The rendering engine can be enabled in Windows Terminal 1.13 by setting the experimental.useAtlasEngine profile setting to true. Users probably won’t experience speed improvements by default, Microsoft admits, but in some cases. The company gives as an example the use of text with a large amount of colors.

Microsoft was criticized last year for Windows Terminal’s rendering pipeline. Performance when displaying many colors with text could be up to 40 percent lower. The new Atlas engine should keep the display at the screen refresh rate in those cases, regardless of the resolution.

The elevate setting has also been added to the preview of Windows Terminal. A profile with this setting enabled will automatically open Terminal windows with administrator privileges enabled. Furthermore, the user interface of the settings has been brought in line with the style of Windows 11.

Simultaneously with the release of the preview version 1.13, the stable version has been updated to Windows Terminal 1.12. This gives that version, among other things, profile matching, recovery options for windows and transparent display.

Windows Terminal is a command-line application for Windows with support for tabs and themes and access to cmd, PowerShell and Windows Subsystem for Linux.