Allowing headless mode (running in the background) prevents Windows Terminal from opening again

[oliver-leung]

Windows Terminal version

1.22.11141.0

Windows build number

10.0.26100.0

Other Software

No response

Steps to reproduce

1. Open Windows Terminal
2. Go to Settings > Compatibility, and turn on "Allow Windows Terminal to run in the background"
   1. Alternatively, open settings.json and set "compatibility.allowHeadless": true
3. Save settings
4. Close Windows Terminal
5. Attempt to open Windows Terminal

Expected Behavior

Windows Terminal opens

Actual Behavior

Windows Terminal does not open

---

In order to get out of this situation, I need to do one of the following:

Option 1

1. Reboot my PC
2. Open Windows Terminal (this will only work for the first attempt after booting)
3. Go to Settings > Compatibility, and turn off "Allow Windows Terminal to run in the background"
4. Save settings

Option 2

1. Open settings.json and set "compatibility.allowHeadless": false
2. Reboot my PC (importantly, this must be done after disallowing headless mode)

I suspect that the issue is that, after allowing headless mode, there is a background process for Windows Terminal running. The fact that this process is running prevents any new Windows Terminal windows from opening. However, I can't figure out which background process is responsible.

[DHowett]

That background process is likely WindowsTerminal.exe.

We don't have any other background processes in that mode. :)

[oliver-leung]

I searched for "terminal" in Task Manager processes, and didn't find anything, but I still couldn't open Windows Terminal

[DHowett]

It's WindowsTerminal. Not just Terminal!

If it isn't running, you don't have headless mode. :)

[oliver-leung]

When I first tried this, I searched for both "terminal" and "windowsterminal", and nothing showed up. Somehow, I do now see WindowsTerminal.exe in Task Manager when I didn't before. Can't seem to upload a screen capture directly to GitHub, but I uploaded it to Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AeIwSi0Z0h5u9ERfhxxNT7h377F4tzwO/view?usp=sharing

Anyways, it isn't a very good experience to end up in this terminal (no pun intended😛) state with no clear indication as to why Terminal won't open anymore. Sure, I can get myself out of it by ending the process, but other users might not know the exact process name to search for.

[Zeroes1]

@oliver-leung try press SHIFT when clicking on LNK

[carlos-zamora]

Curious, do you also have "windowingBehavior": "useExisting" in your settings.json (tracking that over in #18827)? If not, can you share a copy of your settings.json file /?

[oliver-leung]

@Zeroes1 Holding down Shift and clicking on the .lnk doesn't work, unfortunately.

@carlos-zamora That's it! I actually had "windowingBehavior": "useAnyExisting", which wasn't mentioned in #18827, but it seems that both "useAnyExisting" and "useExisting" prevent Terminal from reopening. "useNew" was the only option that allowed me to reopen Terminal.

Is the "useAnyExisting" case addressed in #18623? If so, I'm fine to close out this issue 👍

[carlos-zamora]

Great! I'll close this out as a /duplicate of #18827. And good feedback, I'll update that bug title to be more clear since it looks like quite a few people are hitting this scenario. 😊

Is the "useAnyExisting" case addressed in #18623?

Ah, so that one's on me. It was "fixed" as a part of the big windowing refactor started in #18215 which is available in v1.23.10732.0 (the current Preview channel). We're planning on promoting 1.23 to the stable channel, but we still have a few more fixes in this area we want to do before promoting it.

#18827 tracks doing a servicing fix for 1.22 in the meantime.