Add Open in Windows Terminal Cascading Context Menu in Windows 10

You can add Open in Windows Terminal cascading context menu to Windows 10 File Explorer which will allow you to open the app with one of the available profiles with one click. This addition is a really convenient way to launch Windows Terminal.

Windows Terminal is a modern terminal software for command-line users that has plenty of  features you won't find in the classic Command Prompt and PowerShell tools. It comes with tabs, a GPU accelerated DirectWrite/DirectX-based text rendering engine, profiles, and more.

Thanks to profiles, you can have instances of Command Prompt, PowerShell, and Windows Subsystem for Linux running in tabs. Another great thing about the app is that it is fully open-sourced, so anyone can contribute. It is available on GitHub.

When you have Windows Terminal installed, it add the Open in Windows Terminal entry to the right-click menu of folders in File Explorer. In addition, you can add a new menu command to open Windows Terminal as administrator in the current folder.

While the custom "Terminal as Administrator" menu allows selecting the desired profile, the built-in Open Windows Terminal always open to the default profile, currently PowerShell. In this post, we will see how to add a cascading entry Open in Windows Terminal with subitems that will allow you to select the desired profile directly.

How to add Open in Windows Terminal cascading context menu

1. Download the following ZIP archive: Download ZIP archive.
2. Extract its contents to any folder. You can place the files directly to the Desktop.
3. Double click on the Add Open in Windows Terminal cascading context menu.reg file to merge it.
4. If you have Ubuntu on WSL installed and want to have it in the profile menu, double-click Add WSL to Windows Terminal cascading context menu.reg.
5. FInally, if you have PowerShell 7, you can add its profile by double-clicking on the Add PS7 to Windows Terminal cascading context menu.reg file.
6. To later remove these items from File Explorer, use the provided file Remove Windows Terminal cascading context menu.reg.

How it works

The context menu entries use the following commands to launch the Windows Terminal with the desired profile.

• wt.exe -d folder\path to launch the Windows Terminal with the default profile in the current folder from File Explorer.
• wt.exe -p "Command Prompt" -d folder\path - to open Windows Terminal using the default "Command Prompt" profile.
• wt.exe -p "Windows PowerShell" -d folder\path - to open the default Windows PowerShell profile in Windows Terminal to the current folder location.
• and so on.

That's it.

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