Open a new tab in the running instance of Windows Terminal from CLI

Question

Is there a way to open a new tab in a running instance of Windows Terminal from CLI and make it point to a specific folder?

Every time I run wt.exe -d c:\my-folder it opens a new window.

Answer 1

Now, we have this option in Windows Terminal's Settings.

Answer 2

If someone needs the commands to create a new tab (and not open a new window) from a context menu item: (if you are already in the directory):

wt -w 0 nt

(and if you click on the directory):

wt -w 0 nt -d %1

(to open in the current directory):

wt -w 0 nt -d %CD%

You can add these commands in the respective registry of each item (or in a new one)

Source: the GitHub discussion in the other answer.

if you run that in cmd or a script, it launches a new instance if none already running, or adds a tab if there is a running instance.

Answer 3

This is an outstanding issue that is going to get fixed eventually: Add support for wt.exe to run commands in an existing Terminal Window #4472

Answer 4

No, as per the documentation, calling wt.exe

...will always open a new window. Windows Terminal is not yet capable of opening new tabs or panes in an existing instance.

Answer 5

You can the tool neWin, a CLI command that opens new Window(s) or Tab(s) on WSL Windows Terminal (or KDE Konsole on native linux) and executes given bash command(s).

$ newin --workdir ~/myproject 'npm run start' 'npm run test:watch'

# executes each command in a separate new window and exit.

It runs on nodejs, works great on package.json scripts, but can also be used in any environment/platform.

(disclaimer: I'm the author of neWin)