Add support for "workspaces" based on window names by zadjii-msft · Pull Request #20162 · microsoft/terminal

zadjii-msft · 2026-04-29T19:37:04Z

This adds a new feature to the Windows Terminal: "Workspaces"

Workspaces are very shamelessly inspired by Edge workspaces of the same name.

The core idea is that when users name a window and they close that window, we will persist that Windows layout and buffers, seperately from the rest of window restoration. So a user can open a named window, open some profiles, some panes, do some stuff in it, then close it, and we will keep that state around for the next time the user opens that window name.

Unnamed windows still behave the same. If you close an unnamed window, and it's not the last window, then we won't persist the state of it.

To facilitate restoring named windows, we add a openWorkspace action. This allows us to persist the open workspace action in the window layout restoration path. So when we deserialize the list of tab layouts, and open workspace action will tell us, hey, go retrieve this known workspace from the state.json, instead of trying to serialize the window state in two places.

As demoed in the video, we add a flyout to list the windows that the user has open, and the named workspaces that they have saved. This allows users to quickly reopen previously closed workspaces, as well as quickly rename a window, thereby adding it to the list of saved workspaces. This button can also be hidden using the theme settings.

Closes #17084

This adds a new feature to the Windows Terminal: "Workspaces" Workspaces are very shamelessly inspired by Edge workspaces of the same name. {{video here}} The core idea is that when users name a window and they close that window, we will persist that Windows layout and buffers, seperately from the rest of window restoration. So a user can open a named window, open some profiles, some panes, do some stuff in it, then close it, and we will keep that state around for the next time the user opens that window name. Unnamed windows still behave the same. If you close an unnamed window, and it's not the last window, then we won't persist the state of it. To facilitate restoring named windows, we add a `openWorkspace` action. This allows us to persist the open workspace action in the window layout restoration path. So when we deserialize the list of tab layouts, and open workspace action will tell us, hey, go retrieve this known workspace from the state.json, instead of trying to serialize the window state in two places. <details> <summary> state.json </summary> ```jsonc "persistedWindowLayouts" : [ { "initialPosition" : "910,462", "initialSize" : { "height" : 623.20001220703125, "width" : 934.4000244140625 }, "launchMode" : "default", "tabLayout" : [ { "action" : "newTab", "commandline" : "\"C:\\Program Files\\PowerShell\\7\\pwsh.exe\"", "profile" : "{574e775e-4f2a-5b96-ac1e-a2962a402336}", "sessionId" : "{09d3ef05-ba3d-44ed-a8f1-065d08a806a4}", "startingDirectory" : "C:\\Users\\zadji", "suppressApplicationTitle" : false, "tabTitle" : "PowerShell" }, ] }, { "tabLayout" : [ { "action" : "openWorkspace", "name" : "wsl" } ] } ], "persistedWorkspaces" : { "wsl" : { "initialPosition" : "109,502", "initialSize" : { "height" : 568, "width" : 1184.800048828125 }, "launchMode" : "default", "tabLayout" : [ { "action" : "newTab", "commandline" : "ubuntu.exe", "profile" : "{51855cb2-8cce-5362-8f54-464b92b32386}", "sessionId" : "{a7f70c49-71ec-4ac4-9f3a-4884528a3fd6}", "startingDirectory" : null, "suppressApplicationTitle" : false, "tabTitle" : "Ubuntu" }, { "action" : "renameWindow", "name" : "wsl" } ] } }, ``` </details> As demoed in the video, we add a flyout to list the windows that the user has open, and the named workspaces that they have saved. This allows users to quickly reopen previously closed workspaces, as well as quickly rename a window, thereby adding it to the list of saved workspaces. This button can also be hidden using the theme settings.

…-for-pr

carlos-zamora · 2026-05-05T22:47:19Z

MG edit: collapsing these todos, as they should all be addressed in the most recent push

Feedback from Bug Bash (5/5)

Ctrl+Shift+W on a workspace (named) window will crash the app
how do i delete a workspace? closing the last tab manually didn't do it...
window renamer should automatically take focus
nit: add "workspaces" action(s) to make it keyboard accessible
Small text: Great! Small button: Eh? Makes it hard to press quickly.
Asymmetric button alignment:

Personal note: this is a really cool feature. Thanks for making it happen 😊

There was also some discussion as to how to manage workspaces. It should probably go in the settings UI. Looks like management is pretty simple though. We'd really just need the ability to rename, delete, and open them.

…-for-pr

carlos-zamora

Looks and feels great! Excited for this to land!

The bug below is blocking, for sure.
Also, the global setting should be added to the settings UI in the global appearance page.

Bug

Repro:

Open Terminal
Open a second tab and rename the 2 tabs to "Tab 1" and "Tab 2"
Click Workspaces button > Name this window... --> "My Workspace"
ctrl+shift+n --> open new terminal window
(NOTE) at this point, the workspaces flyout show "#1: My Workspace" appropriately. State seems good!
Close "My Workspace" window
Click Workspaces button > "My Workspace"

Expected: "My Workspace" opens in the same state as in stage 5 above

Actual:

Looks like the space in "My Workspace" caused some kind of parsing issue? The workspace is named "My" and the first tab is named "Workspace".

Clicking on the Workspaces button in the other window shows this:

I think I have a separate comment that found the bug over here: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/pull/20162/changes#r3352221900

carlos-zamora · 2026-06-03T20:56:32Z

 rem run clang-format on c++ files

-powershell -noprofile "import-module %OPENCON_TOOLS%\openconsole.psm1; Invoke-CodeFormat"
+pwsh -noprofile -c "import-module %OPENCON_TOOLS%\openconsole.psm1; Invoke-CodeFormat"


Unrelated change

So @zadjii-msft did we merge with these unrelated changes in?

carlos-zamora · 2026-06-03T20:56:40Z

    )

-    $clangFormatPath = & 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe' -latest -find "**\x64\bin\clang-format.exe"
+    $clangFormatPath = & 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe' -latest -prerelease -find "**\x64\bin\clang-format.exe"


Unrelated change

carlos-zamora · 2026-06-04T00:41:59Z

+                // Right-click to delete: attach a context flyout with a
+                // "Delete workspace?" item that opens a confirmation dialog.


Love this functionality. Found it by total accident. Wonder if there's a way to make this more discoverable. Noticed we do something similar with "run as administrator" in the new tab menu.

Lemme tell you, winui menuflyouts suck. I tried a bunch of different things to add like, a ... button to this flyout and nothing looked remotely good. That's just not a pattern that's used in WinUI.

CmdPal did do something similar, but to do that we basically built our own menuflyout manually, and I'm not keen to try and port all that code to C++/winrt 😔

carlos-zamora · 2026-06-04T00:43:08Z

+                // Right-click to delete: attach a context flyout with a
+                // "Delete workspace?" item that opens a confirmation dialog.


Separately, is there a way to do this with the keyboard? Only workaround I can think of is renaming the current workspace to an empty string.

In this PR, no. I didn't have a clever solution for that. I figured we'd get it in, feel it out, and figure out what we think feels right after playing with it more.

…-for-pr

carlos-zamora

Nice work! Excited to see this land! 😊

carlos-zamora · 2026-06-04T20:52:00Z

Extracted from PR body

Demo

wt-workspaces-000.mp4

state.json

	"persistedWindowLayouts" :
	[
		{
			"initialPosition" : "910,462",
			"initialSize" :
			{
				"height" : 623.20001220703125,
				"width" : 934.4000244140625
			},
			"launchMode" : "default",
			"tabLayout" :
			[
				{
					"action" : "newTab",
					"commandline" : "\"C:\\Program Files\\PowerShell\\7\\pwsh.exe\"",
					"profile" : "{574e775e-4f2a-5b96-ac1e-a2962a402336}",
					"sessionId" : "{09d3ef05-ba3d-44ed-a8f1-065d08a806a4}",
					"startingDirectory" : "C:\\Users\\zadji",
					"suppressApplicationTitle" : false,
					"tabTitle" : "PowerShell"
				},
			]
		},
		{
			"tabLayout" :
			[
				{
					"action" : "openWorkspace",
					"name" : "wsl"
				}
			]
		}
	],
	"persistedWorkspaces" :
	{
		"wsl" :
		{
			"initialPosition" : "109,502",
			"initialSize" :
			{
				"height" : 568,
				"width" : 1184.800048828125
			},
			"launchMode" : "default",
			"tabLayout" :
			[
				{
					"action" : "newTab",
					"commandline" : "ubuntu.exe",
					"profile" : "{51855cb2-8cce-5362-8f54-464b92b32386}",
					"sessionId" : "{a7f70c49-71ec-4ac4-9f3a-4884528a3fd6}",
					"startingDirectory" : null,
					"suppressApplicationTitle" : false,
					"tabTitle" : "Ubuntu"
				},
				{
					"action" : "renameWindow",
					"name" : "wsl"
				}
			]
		}
	},

DHowett

@zadjii-msft I would have blocked this PR had I read it in time. I think we might should revert it, even, until the wt.exe thing is fixed!

DHowett · 2026-06-04T22:01:09Z

+        seInfo.lpFile = exePath.c_str();
+        seInfo.lpParameters = cmdline.c_str();
+        seInfo.nShow = SW_SHOWNORMAL;
+        LOG_IF_WIN32_BOOL_FALSE(ShellExecuteExW(&seInfo));


Why are doing this to ourselves? We are literally calling from inside the process, and we are spawning wt TO SPAWN WindowsTerminal to send a commandline back to ourselves. Why.

This is worse than "we serialize the tab to JSON to tell the other part of the app to launch it anew". Why.

Why.

this is literally what openWindow already does literally 20 lines above this. I copypasted that code cause it just worked.

We can refactor that one too... but it seemed like the parity between the two implementations was the easiest path.

Fair enough. Do we want to re-open this PR then? Sorry for the back and forth.

Nope, we're working on the correct solution

@DHowett

…20291) This reverts commit 4b8b6ff: Add support for "workspaces" based on window names (#20162) @DHowett found the following blocking issues: - #20162 (comment) - unrelated changes in `tools/runformat.cmd` and `OpenConsole.psm1`

From ye old days where we were a multi-process app, we would `shellexecute` to create a new Terminal process when we wanted to open a new window. Now that we're all one process (#18215), this dance doesn't make sense anymore. So: let's just add a bunch of plumbing to take the IContentArgs up to the emperor and have it hand them back to a new window. (this will be used to resurrect #20162)

This is a pair of changes to make the code formatting scripts work, circa 2026. * If you only have VS Insiders installed, then vswhere can't actually find a clang-format to build with. You need `-prerelease` to let it also find preview builds of VS. * Years ago we updated OpenConsole.psm1 to only support pwsh 7. I, of course, use `cmd` as my dev env for terminal, so I use `runformat.cmd`, which always shelled to `powershell` (5). This updates that tool to use pwsh 7. Clearly this impacted only me ever. related to #20162

This adds a new feature to the Windows Terminal: "Workspaces" Workspaces are very shamelessly inspired by Edge workspaces of the same name. The core idea is that when users name a window and they close that window, we will persist that Windows layout and buffers, seperately from the rest of window restoration. So a user can open a named window, open some profiles, some panes, do some stuff in it, then close it, and we will keep that state around for the next time the user opens that window name. Unnamed windows still behave the same. If you close an unnamed window, and it's not the last window, then we won't persist the state of it. To facilitate restoring named windows, we add a `openWorkspace` action. This allows us to persist the open workspace action in the window layout restoration path. So when we deserialize the list of tab layouts, and open workspace action will tell us, hey, go retrieve this known workspace from the state.json, instead of trying to serialize the window state in two places. As demoed in the video, we add a flyout to list the windows that the user has open, and the named workspaces that they have saved. This allows users to quickly reopen previously closed workspaces, as well as quickly rename a window, thereby adding it to the list of saved workspaces. This button can also be hidden using the theme settings. Closes #17084 (this is a reboot of #20162, but with the event from #20311)

github-advanced-security AI found potential problems Apr 29, 2026

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Comment thread src/cascadia/WindowsTerminal/AppHost.cpp Fixed

Comment thread src/cascadia/WindowsTerminal/AppHost.cpp Fixed

Comment thread src/cascadia/WindowsTerminal/AppHost.cpp Fixed

Comment thread src/cascadia/WindowsTerminal/AppHost.cpp Fixed

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zadjii-msft added 2 commits May 5, 2026 11:32

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into dev/migrie/workspaces…

ee1601e

…-for-pr

wle

7dd7783

carlos-zamora added the zBugBash-Consider label May 5, 2026

fix ci

d5d4f99

zadjii-msft added 8 commits May 6, 2026 10:32

don't crash when closing the last pane in a workspace

00aa707

focus the window renamer better

79d681e

delete workspaces ; better padding

b9896f5

actions are good for our keyboard inclined

12e2daa

format

afe42d4

format, for real

74b740c

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into dev/migrie/workspaces…

b17589b

…-for-pr

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into dev/migrie/workspaces…

e581216

…-for-pr

carlos-zamora requested changes Jun 4, 2026

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microsoft-github-policy-service Bot added Needs-Author-Feedback The original author of the issue/PR needs to come back and respond to something and removed Needs-Author-Feedback The original author of the issue/PR needs to come back and respond to something labels Jun 4, 2026

zadjii-msft added 7 commits June 4, 2026 07:00

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into dev/migrie/workspaces…

a6ab65c

…-for-pr

Most of the PR nits

1a67ec9

another good nit

aa4c6dd

format?

bfa3a9c

spaces too

74a7d67

last nits

6038db0

I don't trust you formatter

27b2200

carlos-zamora approved these changes Jun 4, 2026

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zadjii-msft merged commit 4b8b6ff into main Jun 4, 2026
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zadjii-msft deleted the dev/migrie/workspaces-for-pr branch June 4, 2026 21:00

DHowett reviewed Jun 4, 2026

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carlos-zamora mentioned this pull request Jun 4, 2026

Revert "Add support for "workspaces" based on window names (#20162)" #20291

Merged

This was referenced Jun 10, 2026

Convert the Open New Window handler to an event #20311

Merged

Update formatting scripts for Preview-only VS and pwsh 7 #20312

Merged

zadjii-msft mentioned this pull request Jun 11, 2026

Add support for "workspaces" based on window names (redux) #20314

Merged

		// Right-click to delete: attach a context flyout with a
		// "Delete workspace?" item that opens a confirmation dialog.

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carlos-zamora commented Jun 4, 2026

Extracted from PR body

Demo

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zadjii-msft commented Apr 29, 2026 •

edited by carlos-zamora

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