How to Restore the Original Settings of Windows Terminal in Windows 11

This article explains how to rest the Windows Terminal app to its default settings in Windows 11.

Windows Terminal is a modern host application for the command-line shells, including Command Prompt, Windows PowerShell, and bash (via Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)).

It supports multiple tabs, panes, Unicode and UTF-8 character encoding, a GPU-accelerated text rendering engine, and theme customization with text, colors, backgrounds, and shortcuts.

When you customize the Windows Terminal app and some things stop working and want to restore its default settings, the steps below will show you how.

All the settings for the app are stored in the folder below. To restore the app, simply delete the file and start anew.

%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\settings.json

There are multiple ways to restore the default settings for the Windows Terminal app. Here are some methods you can use.

Reset the Windows Terminal app

First, open the Windows Settings app.

You can do that by clicking on the Start menu and selecting Settings. Or press the keyboard shortcut (Windows key + I) to launch the Settings app.

When the Setting app opens, click the Apps button on the left.

Select the Installed app tile under ‘Apps‘ on the right to expand it.

Next, locate the Terminal app and select the Settings and more – > Advanced options.

On the Windows Terminal settings page, click the Reset button to restore its default settings.

Close the apps when you’re done.

Delete the settings file using the Command Prompt or PowerShell

You can reset the Windows Terminal settings using the command line console. Here’s how.

Using Command Prompt:

Run the command below when using the Command Prompt with Terminal.

del /f /s /q /a  "%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\settings.json"

Using PowerShell:

To use PowerShell with Terminal instead, run the command below.

Remove-Item -Path "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\settings.json" -Force

Delete the settings file using File Explorer

Finally, you can browse the file’s location using the File Explorer. Then, select and delete it.

Type the path into the File Explorer address bar and press Enter.

%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState

Next, select and delete the settings.json file.

That should do it!

Conclusion:

This post showed you how to restore the Terminal default settings in Windows 11. Please use the comments form below if you find errors or have something to add.