Integrated terminal in separate window: change colors of foreground/background
06:27 12 Mar 2026

While I can perfectly set the color style of the integrated terminal when it's docked with entries like "terminal.background" below workbench.colorCustomizations in settings.json, the terminal looks like it's inheriting the theme colors when put in a separate window.

I've selected a light theme for my VSCode, and I've configured the integrated terminal to have light text on a dark background. When selecting Move Terminal into New Window, I get a window with a light background and dark text, which is quite the reverse of what the docked terminal version shows (but consistent with the VSCode UI theme).

I had absolutely no issue in the past as the integrated terminal colors of both the docked and separate window variants were the same. Looks like some specific VSCode version has changed this: I've lost track how many times I updated VSCode without using it, but suddenly the terminal color rendering has changed at least in the actual version.

Is there a way I can "sync" the colors of the docked and undocked terminal windows again?

visual-studio-code