Windows 11: Optionally turning off all color in Windows Terminal on a session-by-session basis

Hippo Man 0 Reputation points
2024-05-17T18:36:56.15+00:00

We use Windows 11 at work, and it is a locked-down environment which doesn't allow any of us normal (i.e., non-Administrator) users from installing any software packages, nor from performing most Windows software configurations.

We do, however have write access to the settings.json file for Windows Terminal in our local Windows accounts. However, we still have a problem.

As part of our normal work, we ssh into Linux VPS's from the Windows 11 boxes that we originally log into, and we are required to use Windows Terminal and no other terminal emulators for these ssh sessions. In these sessions, we run various programs under Linux, some of which make use of setting terminal colors.

In some -- but not all -- cases, we are perfectly happy with those terminal color settings. But a few of the software items we run manage color terminals very badly, and for that subset of software items, we do not want our Windows Terminal sessions to run with colors; we only want black-and-white for these sessions.

We know how to control colors via settings.json, but our problem is that we want to control these Windows Terminal colors on a session-by-session basis, not for all Windows Terminal invocations. Since there is only one settings.json file, we don't know whether this is even possible.

Is there some way to invoke Windows Terminal and set its color/no-color state on an invocation-by-invocation basis? Or are we stuck with having all of our Windows Terminal sessions always using the settings in settings.json, with no exceptions?

Thank you in advance for any thoughts and ideas.

Windows 11
Windows 11
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