About Contour
Contour is a modern and actually fast, modal, virtual terminal emulator, for everyday use. It is aiming for power
users with a modern feature mindset.
Contour 0.7.0.8982
Modern C++ Terminal Emulator
- By Contour Terminal Emulator
- Open Source
- Updated Aug 17, 2026
What's new in 0.7.0.8982
A lot has happened since our last release, and that was already too long ago. So now, it is finally time to tag a release, with an already way too long list of great improvements as well as fixes.
Contour 0.7.0 makes the window a workspace: native GUI tabs in the title bar, split panes, saved layouts, and an optional terminal-styled UI that draws the application's own chrome on the character grid. It adds an experimental daemon mode for sessions that outlive the window showing them, accessibility support across the terminal and its chrome, the kitty graphics, text-sizing and clipboard protocols, ReGIS vector graphics, and a large round of VT conformance work.
Tabs, splits and layouts
- Adds first-class GUI tabs presented in a custom window title bar, replacing the status-line tab list (the {Tabs} status-line directive remains supported for existing configs)
- Adds split panes — split the active pane vertically (Ctrl+Shift+E) or horizontally (Ctrl+Shift+O), close a pane (Ctrl+Shift+X), and move pane focus with Alt+Shift+Arrow
- Adds pane management actions: swap the active pane with a neighbor (Ctrl+Alt+Arrow), resize it (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Arrow), flip a split's orientation (Ctrl+Shift+Backslash), and move a pane to a new position in the split tree (unbound by default)
- Adds pane zoom (TogglePaneZoom, Ctrl+Shift+Z): gives the active pane the whole tab area, hiding its siblings, and toggles back to the tiled layout. Moving pane focus while zoomed keeps the zoom and shows the newly focused pane; splitting, closing or rearranging panes returns to the tiled view. A zoomed tab is titled after the pane on screen and wears a Z badge
- Adds dragging tabs: reorder a tab within its strip, drag it into another window, or tear it out into a new window, with a live drop-position indicator showing where it will land; the running terminal survives the move (within the same process)
- Adds renaming a tab by double-clicking it, and a color-swatch picker in its context menu. The picker is keyboard-driven — the cursor keys and the vim motions h/j/k/l walk the swatches, Enter or Space picks the highlighted one, Escape dismisses — and opens on the color the tab already wears
- Adds the actions SetTabColor and ResetTabColor, so coloring a tab is no longer mouse-only: both appear in the command palette, and either can be bound in input_mapping. …
Technical details
| Publisher | Contour Terminal Emulator |
|---|---|
| Version | 0.7.0.8982 |
| Release date | 2026-08-17 |
| License | Apache-2.0 |
| Installer type | zip, wix |
| Architecture | x64 |
| Package ID | contour-terminal.Contour |
| Install scope | All users |
| Dependencies | Microsoft.VCRedist.2015+.x64 |
Install Contour from the command line
- Install with Windows Package Manager
winget install --id=contour-terminal.Contour -e- Update to the latest version
winget upgrade --id=contour-terminal.Contour -e- Uninstall
winget uninstall --id=contour-terminal.Contour -e- Silent install with the offline installer
msiexec /i "contour-0.7.0.8982-win64.msi" /quiet /norestart- Uninstall the MSI package
msiexec /x {0E736497-2B72-4117-95E9-54EC6D000700} /quiet
Contour version history
0.6.3.8249 Apr 9, 2026
Dear package maintainerss
We've bumped the libunicode dependency to version 0.9.0: https://github.com/contour-terminal/libunicode/releases/tag/v0.9.0
Dear macOS users
I find it incredibly hard to package for macOS these days. The project perfectly compiles and runs self built on macOS, but packages build automatically won't. I am still looking into solving this issue. However, if you are one of those guys wanting to help us getting Contour back on track for macOS, we very much welcome contributions, specifically for macOS and the project in general.
Now let's continue with the regular release notes list:
Release Notes
- Adds hint mode for keyboard-driven selection of URLs, file paths, git hashes, and IP addresses with configurable actions (Copy, Open, Paste, Select), activatable via key binding or Vi normal mode (gh/gH)
- Adds auto-scroll when dragging selection past window edges, and Shift+Click to extend existing selections (#1911)
- Adds pixel-based smooth scrolling via smooth_scrolling profile setting, supporting trackpad pixel deltas, mouse wheel, and keyboard scroll actions
- Adds natural momentum scrolling for touchpad gestures with configurable falloff via momentum_scrolling profile setting
- Adds kitty's unscroll extension (CSI n + T) to restore scrolled-off content from scrollback history
- Adds snap-to-grid window resizing via WM size-increment hints (X11/macOS) and client-side snapping (Wayland, where xdg-shell has no size-increment hint) …
0.6.2.8008 Jan 7, 2026
A note on macOS:
Dear macOS users, we sadly were not able to package a self-contained installer for Contour such that you could simply download and install it without any problems. Contour perfectly builds and runs on macOS (any architecture) when built. We want to revive providing .dmg downloads as soon as possible.
Help wanted: If you know how to properly package a self contained C++ application on macOS, please contact us. :-)
Major Changes
- Security: Fixed Out-of-Bounds Write in SequenceParameterBuilder (CWE-787)
- Security: Fixed SSH Trust-On-First-Use (TOFU) vulnerability (CWE-295) with interactive host key verification
- Security: Fixed potential Integer Overflow in parameter parsing (CWE-190)
- Security: Fixed sensitive data exposure in debug logs (CWE-532)
- Fixes insert mode / default status line colorscheme loading (#1737)
- Fixes CancelSelection default binding with escape (#1710)
- Fixes CreateTab to sometimes spawn more than one tab (#1695)
- Fixes crash using Chinese IME (#1707)
- Fixes NumLock key handling (#1713)
- Fixes handling of multiple windows and tabs (#1725)
- Fixes crash on scaling down some symbols during font size change
- Fixes mouse scrolling speed being too slow
- Fixes crash in vi normal mode when using y0 (#1801)
- Fixes empty history jump (#1781)
- Fixes double line box drawing characters
- Fixes DECRQM (DEC Request Mode) response (#1797)
- Fixes Precondition failure when rendering vertically overflowing glyphs (#1805) …
0.6.1.7494 Dec 31, 2024
Frequently asked questions
Is Contour free?
Yes. Contour is free and open-source software released under the Apache-2.0 license.
What is the latest version of Contour?
The latest version is 0.7.0.8982, released on Aug 17, 2026.
Is it safe to download Contour?
The download button links to the official installer published on github.com, the same file Windows Package Manager installs. You can verify the downloaded file by comparing its SHA-256 checksum with 29bed53dd40ae8625a0489deaea6a7303e18678869116622cad69f687440042e.
Which Windows versions does Contour support?
Contour runs on Windows and is available for 64-bit (x64) systems.
How do I install Contour silently?
Run the offline installer with msiexec /i "contour-0.7.0.8982-win64.msi" /quiet /norestart, or install it with Windows Package Manager: winget install --id=contour-terminal.Contour -e --silent.
How do I uninstall Contour?
Open Settings › Apps › Installed apps, find Contour and select Uninstall. From the command line, run winget uninstall --id=contour-terminal.Contour -e.
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