How to Change Tab Colors in Windows Terminal
You can change tab colors in Windows Terminal to visually distinguish your command-line sessions.
Windows Terminal is a modern application that consolidates command-line tools like Command Prompt, PowerShell, and WSL distributions into a single, tabbed interface. Personalizing these tabs with distinct colors helps you quickly identify which environment you’re working in, especially when running multiple sessions simultaneously.
For instance, you might assign red to your administrative PowerShell tab and blue to your Ubuntu WSL tab. There are three ways to set a color. The right one depends on whether you want a quick, temporary color or a permanent one.
Right-click the tab in Windows Terminal, choose Color…, and click a swatch. The tab changes color immediately and the change lasts only for that session. For a permanent color, open Settings, select the profile under Profiles, choose Appearance, set Tab color, and click Save.
Method 1Change the color from the tab’s context menu (quickest)
Use this when you want to mark a single session, for example the one connected to a production server. The color applies to that session only.
- Right-click the tab you want to color. You can also open the tab’s dropdown menu instead. A context menu appears.
- Choose Color…. A set of color swatches appears.
- Click a swatch. The tab changes color right away. If the picker offers a custom option, you can pick a color that isn’t in the preset list.
Method 2Set a permanent tab color per profile
Use this when a profile should always have the same color. A good example is red for your administrative PowerShell profile, so you never mistake it for a normal session.
- Open Windows Terminal and open Settings from the tab dropdown.
- In the left pane, under Profiles, select the profile you want to change, such as Windows PowerShell or Ubuntu.
- Select Appearance.
- Find the Tab color option and choose a color.
- Click Save at the bottom of the page. Open a new tab with that profile and it should show the color you chose.
The path is Settings Profiles > [profile] > Appearance. If you prefer to edit the configuration file, the same result comes from the profile’s tabColor value in settings.json. Settings has an option to open that file. To undo the change, clear the Tab color option in Settings, or remove the tabColor value from the profile in settings.json.
Method 3Use the command palette, color schemes and the tab row theme
- Press Ctrl+Shift+P to open the command palette.
- Type “tab color” to filter the list, then select the Set tab color action. You can then choose the color for the current tab, the same as with the context menu.
Tab colors can also be tied to a color scheme’s background. If you use a different color scheme for each profile, the tabs can follow those backgrounds, which gives you a visual cue without setting each tab by hand. How a tab looks when you haven’t set a color depends on your theme and Terminal version, so check how yours behaves.
The look of the tab row itself is a separate setting. You can change it under Settings Appearance. Changes there affect the whole tab row, not individual profiles. A very dark or very light theme can make some tab colors harder to tell apart, so check that your colors still stand out after you change it.
A few practical tips:
- Pick colors with clear contrast between them. Two similar blues are easy to confuse.
- Reserve red for sessions where a mistake is expensive, such as elevated or production sessions.
- Use the context menu for one-off sessions and the profile setting for everything you use regularly.
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About the Author
Richard
Tech Writer, IT Professional
Richard is a writer at Geek Rewind who turns complex IT tasks into clear, step-by-step guides. He draws on years of hands-on experience in system administration and enterprise IT operations, focusing on Windows, Linux and WordPress: the problems people actually run into, and the fixes that work. His server and WordPress guides come from systems he runs himself. Richard builds and maintains the platform behind Geek Rewind, from its Ubuntu servers and Nginx configuration to its custom WordPress plugins. Many new tutorials start with readers' questions, and he's always glad to answer them in the comments.
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