How can I check if PowerShell runs in a Windows Terminal that supports ANSI/VT100 escape codes?

[Daniel Niccoli (danielniccoli)]

How can I check if PowerShell runs in a Windows Terminal that supports ANSI/VT100 escape codes?

[Mike Griese (zadjii-msft)]

At the risk of oversimplifying - If you're running on Windows 10, then the console supports escape sequences.

[Dustin L. Howett (DHowett)]

(This will be true regardless of the presence of Windows Terminal!)

[Daniel Niccoli (danielniccoli)]

Huh, you're right. I will tell you what confused me. I noticed that a terminal application I produces bat output when opened in the legacy Windows Console Host.

The same command in Windows Terminal produces correct output.

Now that you told me, Windows 10 supports ANSI escape codes regardless, I tried to verify this and you're right.

In a PowerShell windows I ran the following line to store an escaped sequence in a bat file: "echo \e[5;36mHello World!`e[0m" > test.bat

In Windows Console Host:

In Windows Terminal:

What could be the reason for this behaviour?

[Mike Griese (zadjii-msft)]

SetConsoleMode, with ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_PROCESSING. The Terminal enables it by default for commandline applications. The vintage console does not. pwsh I believe also leaves it on by default for client applications, even in conhost.

[Daniel Niccoli (danielniccoli)]

Thank you for the explanation!