From 8bc850cbb2e3e9d7beef7d6dcb55ab6a848411a2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christopher Nguyen <91625426+nguyen-dows@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2025 11:27:59 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] Add FAQ section to Portable Mode Docs (#797) Add a FAQ section to the Portable Mode docs and address https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/terminal/issues/665 --------- Co-authored-by: Dustin L. Howett Co-authored-by: Matt Wojciakowski --- TerminalDocs/distributions.md | 13 ++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/TerminalDocs/distributions.md b/TerminalDocs/distributions.md index db3df1e1..ebbbd521 100644 --- a/TerminalDocs/distributions.md +++ b/TerminalDocs/distributions.md @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ title: Windows Terminal Distribution Types description: Learn how to use the different distributions of Windows Terminal. author: nguyen-dows ms.author: chrnguyen -ms.date: 04/10/2023 +ms.date: 02/03/2025 ms.topic: how-to --- @@ -98,6 +98,17 @@ If you wish to reenable portable mode, you can create a new `.portable` marker f You can upgrade a portable mode installation of Windows Terminal by moving the `.portable` marker file and the `settings` directory to a newly-extracted unpackaged version of Windows Terminal. +### Portable mode FAQs + +#### Why don't ms-appdata URLs work in Portable mode? +Prior to portable mode, a common practice to reference images in `settings.json` would be to use `ms-appdata:///Local`. + +Portable mode offers a self-contained Terminal installation, where user data and application data are stored in the same place. As there is no separate user data folder, references to such folder (e.g. with `ms-appdata`) will not work. + +To refer to paths relative to the application install directory, use an `ms-appx:` URL. + +To refer to paths relative to the settings directory, use the environment variable `%WT_SETTINGS_DIR%`. + ["Portable mode"]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_application [GitHub releases]: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/releases [preinstallation kit]: /windows/msix/desktop/deploy-preinstalled-apps