Fix – Windows Terminal 1.16 Won’t open (Startup issue)

According to various reports from users Windows Terminal 1.16 stable has a bug that prevents it from opening. And if you landed on this page, then you’re facing the same Windows Terminal 1.16 startup issue, right?

If you don’t know, Windows Terminal is a default command line application in Windows 11 and Microsoft has recently released Windows Terminal 1.17 Preview and Windows Terminal 1.16 Stable.

The previous version of the app is working flawlessly, while the stable version is not opening for various users who have upgraded to Windows Terminal 1.16.

So why does Windows Terminal 1.16 have a startup issue? You will face this issue if the Windows Terminal app is set to “Run as administrator” for the active profile. It could be a Command prompt, Microsoft Powershell, Linux Terminal, and others.

Fix – Windows Terminal 1.16 Won’t open (Startup issue)

Fortunately, there are two workarounds to fix Windows Terminal 1.16 won’t open the issue. Let’s start with the first one:

If Windows Terminal Profile is not Set to open with admin rights, then here’s what you need to do:

Right-click on the desktop and select Open in Terminal.

Click on the Down arrow next to (+) and select Settings from the menu.

In the Windows Terminal settings page, you need to head over to Profile on the left side. Under it, either switch to Default, Powershell, Command prompt, or other and turn off “Run this profile as administrator”

Click Save.

After that, you can use CTRL + SHIFT + Open in Terminal to open the Terminal with admin, rights.

If you’re unable to use the above method, then edit the .json file. Here’s how you can do that:

Launch File Explorer by pressing WIN + E and then in the address bar copy-paste the below location and hit enter.

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState

In the LocalState folder, open the setting.json file with notepad.

After that search for “elevate”: true, change True to False, and save it.

From now onwards, Windows Terminal will work without an issue.

Why don’t you try the solution discussed in this blog post and let me know if this helps in fixing the Windows Terminal startup bug?

Thanks, Deskmodder for sharing the issue and solution