I installed Windows Terminal and expected the wt command to work system-wide. It did not. This is the step-by-step account of what I received, how I reasoned about the problem, and how I solved it.

What I received

These are the key outputs and messages I saw as I debugged the problem.

1. Confirmed installation location:

PS C:\Users\Admin> Get-AppxPackage *WindowsTerminal* | Select InstallLocation

InstallLocation
---------------
C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_1.23.12681.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

2. wt not recognized when called directly:

PS C:\Users\Admin> wt -d $PWD
wt : The term 'wt' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program.
...

3. find where located, then Direct launch of the executable worked:

& "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_1.23.12681.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\wt.exe"
# Windows Terminal opened

4. Attempt to add WindowsApps to PATH with setx produced truncation warning and did not solve the problem:

WARNING: The data being saved is truncated to 1024 characters.

SUCCESS: Specified value was saved.

5. After using the safe .NET method to update the PATH, the command worked:

PS C:\Users\Admin> wt -d $PWD
# Windows Terminal opened in the current directory

Thought process (how I moved)

• Verify the install. If the app is not installed, no point troubleshooting PATH.
• Try running wt normally. The error indicates PATH resolution, not a broken binary.
• Confirm the binary runs when launched directly from the install folder. If so, the binary is fine; the problem is how the system resolves the command.
• Inspect PATH for the Store execution-alias folder C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps. If missing, add it.
• Avoid setx because it truncates long PATH values to 1024 characters. Use the .NET API to update the user PATH without truncation and avoid duplicates.
• Restart shells and test.

The commands I ran (exact)

Check install location

Get-AppxPackage *WindowsTerminal* | Select InstallLocation

Verify direct launch

& "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_1.23.12681.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\wt.exe"

Check current PATH entries

$env:PATH -split ';'