microsoft/Terminal

DEC Locator mode

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#19,954 opened on Mar 7, 2026

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Area-VTHelp WantedIssue-FeatureProduct-Terminal

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Description

Description of the new feature

Basically the 30 year older and more powerful alternative to #18591 to handle some mouse cursor stuff for SIXEL applications. (Creating this issue now cause it might get closed due to #19949.)

Some discussion on why to support this including GIF showcase: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/18591#issuecomment-2671611361 (and following comments).

SGR is not that widely used and if only SGR was supported it would obviously increase the amount of applications that could instead use Locator mode if it was supported. If Locator mode was supported in such a widely used terminal emulator, a case could be made for other terminal emulators not that widely spread to support it as well, increasing general terminal-ecosystem feature-parity with older VTs.

Proposed technical implementation details

No response

Contributor guide

Research direction
Study DEC Locator mode specification and review existing SIXEL support in Windows Terminal. Propose an implementation plan focusing on input handling and VT sequence parsing.
Tech stack
cpp
Domain
cli
Issue type
Feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
4
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
Over 1 week
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Fresh
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Mostly clear
Prerequisites
C++Windows Terminal internals
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
20