Request: Support Visual Studio Integrated Terminal Instead of Forcing Windows Console Host

[fooberichu150]

Hi! First, thank you for the work on this extension — it’s been extremely useful.

I’ve run into a problem caused by the extension’s requirement to set Terminal Settings → “Windows Console Host” instead of “Let Windows Decide.”

When Visual Studio is allowed to “Let Windows Decide,” launching console applications under the debugger opens them in Windows Terminal tabs, which keeps everything clean and contained.

However, when the extension forces Windows Console Host, Visual Studio falls back to conhost.exe, and every debug session opens in a separate standalone window. This becomes pretty disruptive when working with multiple console apps.

Why this matters

The extension appears to rely on APIs that implicitly require the legacy console host. But this has the side effect of breaking the modern Windows Terminal integration that Visual Studio normally uses.

Feature Request

Would you consider updating the extension to use Visual Studio’s Integrated Terminal API instead of relying on the external console host?

Visual Studio 2022 exposes an embeddable terminal (based on xterm.js) that extensions can open and run commands in. This would allow:

• Internal tabbed terminals
• No extra windows
• No need to force the system-wide terminal host
• Compatibility with the user’s preferred terminal settings
• A more modern experience overall

Why this is the best path

Extensions cannot override Visual Studio’s debugger terminal host, and they cannot embed Windows Terminal itself. But they can use the Integrated Terminal API:

IVsTerminalService terminalService = ...;
var terminal = terminalService.CreateTerminal("Claude Terminal");
terminal.RunCommand("dotnet run");

This avoids the need to force “Windows Console Host” and restores the clean, tabbed workflow users expect.

Summary

• Current behavior forces Windows Console Host → breaks Windows Terminal integration
• Visual Studio extensions cannot force VS to use Windows Terminal
• But extensions can use the Integrated Terminal API
• Switching to that would solve the issue cleanly and improve UX

If this is something you’d consider supporting, it would make the extension much more seamless to use with modern Visual Studio setups.

Thanks again for your work on this project!

[dliedke]

Thanks for your contributions, version 6.6 is published to prod. Added your username as credits.