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Tim O’Reilly

Windows Terminal is a modern host application for command-line shells. It gives you rich configuration options to adjust your work with different shells and make terminals beautiful and aligned to your work (Command Palette, Dynamic Profiles, selection capabilities, etc. ).

By popular demand, Quake mode was added in version 1.9. Quake mode is a popular/useful feature implemented in other command line shells and operating systems.

Quake mode enables you to have focused dropdown terminal invoked either via key combination or via cli command call. That enables you to always have terminal quickly available with one shot.

How to enable it?

Open Windows terminal. If you don’t have it installed, follow instructions here. Go to the settings (you can use CTRL+SHIFT+P to open command palette and search for settings).

Navigate to Actions menu option in left pane and click button Add new action:

Select newly created button and search for Show/hide quake in the dropdown menu:

Assign a key shortcut to the command and apply the choice by pressing confirmation button.

After confirmation you should see your result:

What do you get out of the box

When firing up the command / key stroke, you’ll get command line (default profile you have set in Windows Terminal) rolled up from top of the monitor to the half of the monitor window:

Now you can easily use it whenever you want to access the terminal (keep in mind you need to have Windows Terminal open).

When invoked, the terminal window will be focused. When closed, it will return to the last window you were at before calling quake mode.

If you want to call it from command line (without bounding to a key combination), command is the following:

wt -w _quake

This will open fresh window. If you already have terminal open, it will create new instance.

Keep in mind that you won’t see windows in ALT+TAB. If you don’t have it bind with a key, you won’t be able to exit it (when hidden) and you need to go to the Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) and kill the instance(s) for window to be closed.

Starting Windows terminal when Windows starts

If you want to start terminal on Windows startup, you can set that in Windows Terminal settings:

When you execute Quake mode, the Windows Terminal window will be shown in taskbar. If you don’t want app to be shown in Windows taskbar, you can change that behavior in Windows Terminal settings:

For additional options check official documentation here.

Closing remarks

Quake mode is really handful if you are working daily with Windows Terminal. It makes you productive as you have the command line at your fingertips whenever you need it. It is not obtrusive, rather it is quick and focused. I use it frequently and love it.