Notice in UI on updating the Terminal app + Fix a Release Notes link to point to the actual release page and not generic releases page

[vadimkantorov]

I've just acquired a new laptop, it installed "Windows Terminal Version: 1.6.10571.0" with Win11, and this Terminal is quite old, it doesn't even include a Settings UI. It would be nice if Terminal app included a way to update itself or at least a notice on this in About window.

Ideally there should be an easy updating mechanism no matter how WT is installed (if via msix, it should offer to download the latest msix etc)

Also clicking on Release Notes there in About window redirects to generic repo's release notes, and not notes of the specific release.

[DHowett]

Honestly, if we could have updated the version that shipped with Windows 11 to add a notice, we would have updated it to just add the settings UI. It's one of my biggest regrets: by the time it was ready, Win11 was "feature complete"... and we learned that we could not include updates for packaged applications in a servicing update. :(

[vadimkantorov]

Wow :( Well. There are a bunch of go.microsoft.com links in About Window. May be good to somehow offer updates there. Anyway, I'm stuck so far. Should I uninstall Win11-packaged terminal and re-install one from store? I just want to have an auto-updatable version

[vadimkantorov]

And including some notice about updates in About window may be a good idea anyways + discard the About window on mouse clicks out-of-bounds. Currently it requires clicking on Ok strictly

[vadimkantorov]

Okay, it seems that it's already Store version, but the app itself doesn't suggest that it can be updated via Store. Win11 itself after first start also doesn't update it by itself for some reason. It would be good if it did

[DHowett]

You should be able to update it from the store as per usual or install the latest build from this GitHub repository. Fortunately, these methods all lead to the same place -- the latest build, installed on your machine, and updatable by the store. Every preinstalled packaged app (like Terminal, Photos, Video, ...) is hooked up to the store automatically and should automatically receive updates.

[DHowett]

Okay, it seems that it's already Store version, but the app itself doesn't suggest that it can be updated via Store. Win11 itself after first start also doesn't update it by itself for some reason. It would be good if it did

I suspect this is to give you a "quiet period." Starting with some recent-ish build of Windows 10 (perhaps the 2018 one? maybe earlier...) Windows doesn't offer you updates for a day or two after a new install. It's supposed to minimize the number of instances in the wild of folks buying new computers that immediately start to complain about being out of date or interrupting your day-to-day life while you're getting set up.

[vadimkantorov]

There is also no Update button in the Win11 Apps & Features window. It would make sense to add there a button Update All - same as to Store -> Library -> Get updates (Library is not the most intuitive place to look for Terminal updates :))

[DHowett]

I am totally down to add something in the about dialog to suggest you update, but beyond that we're getting into platform surfaces my team doesn't own/has very little sway over :)

[zadjii-msft]

As noted on Teams, this might be super doable:

StoreContext updateManager = StoreContext.GetDefault();
IReadOnlyList<StorePackageUpdate> updates = await updateManager.GetAppAndOptionalStorePackageUpdatesAsync();

tagging as appropriate

[alam-anwar]

hi, I'd be happy to help out on this issue. where would I start if I wanted to implement a UI feature like this? I can try the solution that @zadjii-msft recommended, but I'm not sure where something like this would go. thank you in advance for your help :)