FluentTerminal: a UWP terminal the author now tells you to replace with Windows Terminal

The README opens with an instruction to stop using it

The first thing in the README is a status block, and it is unambiguous. The project status is Unmaintained, this project is no longer being maintained, and the recommendation is to use Windows Terminal instead, with the author describing it as containing everything originally set out to achieve with Fluent Terminal and more.

That framing changes what an evaluation is for. The README recommends choosing Windows Terminal instead. What the repository is still useful for is the other thing a repository like this can be: a record of how a terminal emulator is put together in C# and UWP, with the shell profile, theme and connection model laid out in source.

The version history supports the same conclusion. The last three releases are 0.7.5.0 from January 2021, 0.7.6.0 from February 2022 and 0.7.7.0 from March 2022. Nothing has been published in the four years since, even though the last push to the repository was on 2026-10-10.

UWP and web technologies is the constraint that shaped everything

FluentTerminal is described as a terminal emulator based on UWP and web technologies, and it is written in C#. The project directory structure makes the layering visible: FluentTerminal.App, FluentTerminal.App.Services, FluentTerminal.App.ViewModels, FluentTerminal.Client, FluentTerminal.Models, FluentTerminal.RuntimeComponent, FluentTerminal.SystemTray and FluentTerminal.Package, alongside a FluentTerminal.sln and a Dependencies/ directory. There is a test project, FluentTerminal.App.Services.Test.

That split is a Windows app packaged for the Store, with a client layer, a shared runtime component and a packaging project of its own. It is a conventional C# MVVM application structure, and the naming is conventional enough that a reader can navigate it without prior knowledge of the project.

The end-user prerequisite is stated as the Fall Creators Update or later, and the manual install path ends with double clicking a.appxbundle file.

Shell profiles, SSH and Mosh are the features it was built around

The feature list is a terminal emulator's feature list, and reading it tells you where the effort went. A terminal for PowerShell, CMD, WSL or custom shells, with shell profiles configured to switch quickly between them. Built-in support for SSH and Mosh connections, with Mosh documented separately in a MOSH_README.md at the repository root. Tabs and multiple windows, fullscreen mode, a search function and editable keybindings.

Appearance is treated as a first-class concern rather than an afterthought: theming and appearance configuration, import and export of themes, and direct import of iTerm themes.

Two integrations are worth pulling out because they show where the project's scope reached. There is Explorer context menu integration, with an installation script kept in its own directory under Explorer Context Menu Integration, which is the difference between right-clicking a folder and opening a terminal there or not. And there is a Visual Studio Code extension, published on the marketplace under Xherdi.fluent-terminal, so the terminal could be driven from inside the editor.

Thirty-five interface languages, and the translation workflow around them

The localisation list is longer than the feature list. Thirty-five languages are listed, from Albanian and Arabic through Chinese in Simplified and Traditional forms, Esperanto, Hebrew, Hindi, Persian and Ukrainian, with both European and Brazilian Portuguese, and both Serbian and Slovenian.

Maintaining that by hand is why UpdateTranslations.ps1 sits at the repository root. The README points contributors at POEditor and asks them to sign up for the project there to work on existing translations or add a new language, so the localisation pipeline runs through a hosted service with the PowerShell script handling the export side.

This is a reasonable thing to point at when evaluating a project you might fork. A terminal emulator with a first-class translation workflow is a different maintenance commitment from one where localisation is a pull request in the repository, and the two have very different costs once a community starts using the thing.

Three install routes, and each one has aged differently

The end-user installation section lists three ways in, plus a manual fallback.

The Microsoft Store is the primary route, with a store listing and a badge in the README. Chocolatey is the second, and the command is run from an elevated or admin shell:

choco install fluent-terminal

Scoop is the third, and it needs 7zip and git installed before the bucket can be added. From an admin shell:

scoop bucket add nonportable
scoop install fluent-terminal-np

The nonportable bucket name and the `-np` package suffix both signal that the package installs to a system location rather than a per-user one, which is why the README insists on an elevated shell for both package managers.

Manual installation is downloading and extracting the latest release and double clicking the .appxbundle. That last step is the fragile one: appxbundle is UWP packaging, and the sideloading rules for it are not something the README covers, so anyone following that path today should expect to verify it works on their Windows build before relying on it.

GPL-3.0 is the one decision that affects a fork today

FluentTerminal is GPL-3.0, with a LICENSE file at the repository root. For an end user running the application that is irrelevant. For anyone reading the code, copying a class out of it, or forking it to keep it alive, it is the constraint that decides what you may do.

GPL-3.0 is a strong copyleft licence. If you distribute a modified version of the program, the obligations attach to that derived work, not to some separate component of it. A maintained fork of FluentTerminal would have to comply with the GPL-3.0 distribution terms.

The README gives one alternative for anyone who wants a maintained terminal on Windows, and that recommendation is to move to a different project rather than to fork this one. For an organisation with a Windows terminal estate that needs maintaining rather than replacing, the licence is the first thing to settle, because it determines whether a fork is even an option. This paragraph describes the stated terms rather than interpreting them, and a formal review is the right route for anything more specific.

Where the source is still worth reading

The development environment instructions are not in the README. The project points to a wiki page titled How to set up a development environment, which is the only documentation of how to build it, and that is consistent with the rest of the project's shape: the build story lives outside the repository.

What the repository does offer is a complete, self-contained application in one language, with the layering separated into projects, a test project for the services layer, and a nuget.config at the root. FluentTerminal.Models, FluentTerminal.Client and FluentTerminal.RuntimeComponent in particular are the parts a reader would look at to understand how this style of terminal talks to a shell and manages sessions.

For an engineer deciding whether to adopt this, the answer is that there is nothing left to adopt. The last release is from March 2022, the project says it is no longer maintained, and the author names the successor. Read it for the design if the problem interests you; install it only if you already depend on it and the Store listing still resolves.

Editorial conclusion

Use FluentTerminal only as a historical reference now, because the README declares the project unmaintained and points to Windows Terminal as the replacement, and the last tagged release is 0.7.7.0 from 2022-03-13. If you are already running it, verify that the Microsoft Store entry or Chocolatey package still resolves on your Windows version before planning to keep it. Do not start new work on this codebase expecting fixes; the repository's last push was on 2026-10-10 with no release attached to it.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. felixse/FluentTerminal on GitHub
2. Issues
3. License: GPL-3.0
4. README
5. Releases