Windows Terminal: Open New WSL Tab In Linux Home Folder


The path you are in when opening a new WSL tab is determined by startingDirectory. This parameter needs to be a valid Windows path, which isn’t great if we want to end up in /home/kamner inside WSL.

The nice thing about WSL is that it will resolve windows paths into their equivalent WSL/linux path if possible.

For example, C:\Scripts would resolve to /mnt/c/Scripts.

Using this and the neat trick that the WSL filesystem is exposed as a a hidden fileshare ([[technology/windows/wsl-hidden-fileshare]]) we can get to where we want.

To get the hidden fileshare path of your home directory navigate to it and open it with explorer.exe

cd ~
explorer.exe .

This will give you a strange hidden network share path in explorer. Just use that as startingDirectory and we are all set.

See also