Terminal desperately needs a horizontal scrollbar (similar to Command Prompt)

[c0d3h4x0r]

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Note: 📌 Pinned comment: #1860 (comment)

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Summary of the new feature/enhancement

Windows Terminal needs to have a configurable horizontal scrollbar (similar to Command Prompt) so that lines longer than the window width are actually readable by scrolling to the right, rather than being a big indecipherable word-wrapped mess as is typically seen on UNIX-like systems.

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

Make it so.

[DHowett-MSFT]

indecipherable word-wrapped mess

I mean, that seems a little strong. One of the biggest requests we had for Windows 10 was to add support for wrapping to the traditional/legacy console!

[c0d3h4x0r]

That's because I feel strongly about it :) I absolutely hate line-wrapped console output... always have.

[caitlynrw]

Maybe make it a config,

"text-wrap": false

when true does as it does now, false gives horizontal scrollbar.

Edit: I didn't read the original post correctly, so proposed config*

[egmontkob]

The traditional Unix terminal emulation (using ANSI escape sequences) is pretty much incompatible with this idea. See e.g. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=769440.

[zadjii-msft]

@AlwaysHC Could you elaborate more on why you need this feature? I don't think I really understand the use case. Maybe there's some way to make your workflow work in the Windows Terminal without a horizontal scrollbar?

[c0d3h4x0r]

@zadjii-msft Because wrapped lines are obnoxiously more difficult to visually parse.

[AlwaysHC]

@AlwaysHC Could you elaborate more on why you need this feature? I don't think I really understand the use case. Maybe there's some way to make your workflow work in the Windows Terminal without a horizontal scrollbar?

tail -f /var/log/messages

[matthewgdv]

I'm in agreement that we need this feature. I use a lot of interactive workflows that display asciified tables in the terminal (which are often several screen-lengths long) and having them be wrapped is a dealbreaker since it turns them into illegible gibberish. Likewise with several other forms of console output where the formatting across lines is important. Please implement horizontal scrolling as an option because currently I think this terminal will be useless to a lot of users with similar requirements.

[marveloo]

I am copying the question which I asked here: #6730

Why is Windows terminal unable to load a wide window (of fixed width) behind the scenes with only a part of the window visible to the user and a horizontal scrollbar to move that window from side to side? The shell itself may not even be aware of me staring at it throw a smaller size window. In other words all this thing could be implemented on the UI part only by letting the shell think that I am on a wider window than it actually is.

[DHowett]

If we make any changes here, they are going to be in line with other terminal emulators that have established precedent: the typical options are wrap or truncate. Would truncate be more to your liking?

[c0d3h4x0r]

The behavior ought to be exactly the same as Command Prompt has been for ages: word-wrap, but only beyond a buffer width that the user can configure to be much wider than the actual window width. For example, allow me to set the buffer width to 9999 characters, so that word wrapping does not occur until the 10000th character on each line (which should effectively never wrap).

[j4james]

I think the confusion here stems from the fact that some people were expecting a kind of "infinite" width, that would expand as more content was written out. I don't think that is feasible for a terminal. However, a wide (but fixed size) buffer within a smaller viewport is a different matter. As had been mentioned, we already support that in the conhost console. And it's worth mentioning that some of the DEC terminals supported a similar concept, so it's not without precedent.

That said, for many of the use cases mentioned, you can probably get by with piping your output through less -S. That should give you an unwrapped view of the content that can be scrolled horizontally.

[zadjii-msft]

Fair enough. That was noodling on the UX, not a definite requirement.

So either the scrollbar space is allocated up front, regardless of whether it's initially visible

This seems infinitely easier than reveal on hover. At least the winui scroll bars are pretty subtle when not moused over.

[zadjii-msft]

Well, I hate the code. And I hate that the DX and Atlas engines both seem to not support horizontal scrolling (even in conhost).

but like, proof of concept:

[j4james]

I hate that the DX and Atlas engines both seem to not support horizontal scrolling

DX seems to work for me. Atlas has a few issues, but I'm almost sure it used to work in the past, so maybe there's something that regressed recently.

[bigvzhang]

The problem seems resolved. But I don't know how to configure it on my desktop. Would you guys kindly tell me how to do it?

[AloisKraus]

@bigvzhang: The issue #15707 which is merged just deals with bugs in the rendering engine. The bug fixes which are needed later to implement the feature are now shipped with the next release. I do not see any scrolling code in the public.

[zadjii-msft]

That's correct. I only ever got this to a WIP state. My notes are up in #1860 (comment). Not sure I'll have time to loop back around to polish for shipping any time soon.

[simonjha]

Yes, we absolutely need this feature, which "Command Prompt" provided before through its properties-buffer setting.

We've been using "Command Prompt" console to print the application logs, which are long string lines. When we read those lines, we definitely don't want the text line wrapped, but want a horizontal scrolling.

It is so bad that it lost this function, after "Command Prompt" was moved to Windows Terminal.

By the way, we mostly use "Command Prompt" console to SSH to the Unix systems to read app log text files having the long string lines. If the lines are wrapped, no way you can read them.

So, please, please add non-word-wrap & horizontal scrollbar back in Windows Terminal.

[BerndHme]

Please add word wrapping.
Like the VS output console can.
There is a toggle button.

[karunkrishna]

Seeing data on a horizontal scroll would be killer
Currently need to subset data columns or shrink terminal to non-legible level just to view data in tabular format.

[cesar-o9]

Seeing data on a horizontal scroll would be killer Currently need to subset data columns or shrink terminal to non-legible level just to view data in tabular format.

You can try "tput rmam" (remove auto margin). that works for me. to reset it "tput smam" to set it again.

[zehawki]

Yup here is another example of unreadable madness:

[Cfun1]

I have the latest version of windows command line terminal. When executing a console app from VS that prints long line (just few characters off screen), there is no word wrap being applied nor horizontal scroll available also I can't find any relevant setting. The only way is to select and move mouse cursor to right direction to be able to see off screen text of the long line

[scharnyw]

As mentioned in #6895 (comment), a workaround for now is to temporarily decrease the font size with ctrl-minus

[mcdonamw]

That's not a good workaround. In many cases, e.g., that screenshot above, you'd have to lower the font to the point it was unreadable.

[mcdonamw]

One of the biggest requests we had for Windows 10 was to add support for wrapping to the traditional/legacy console!

keyword: add

[lynnewu]

PowerShell table-formatted output often exceeds the horizontal width of even my full-width monitors. My current solution is to snap the window open a couple monitors wide (or more) to see everything. Wrapping output results in an unparseable mess. Definitely want a horizontal scroll bar (or even just the ability to scroll horizontall with a mouse h-scroll wheel).