Lost drag and drop into Powershell with recent Windows update this week

wallmonster · August 21, 2026, 5:11pm

Pretty much as the title says. With UAC disabled I can no longer drag and drop from Windows Explorer into a Powershell terminal. Any plans or possibilities to address this?

Thanks
Walter

discord-bridge · August 29, 2026, 9:00pm

Discord: reverieviee: Hey, dug into this a bit. This is a Windows limitation that’s been around for years. When a PowerShell or Terminal window is running as Administrator, Windows blocks drag and drop from a regular (non-elevated) Explorer window into it, as a security measure. Turning UAC off doesn’t reliably get around this either, since Explorer often doesn’t end up elevated just because the prompts are disabled.

People have been reporting this same thing on the Windows Terminal team’s own tracker for years with no fix from Microsoft:

github.com/microsoft/terminal

Unable to drag/drop a file to terminal with UAC turned off

opened 02:58AM - 27 Sep 20 UTC

closed 05:13PM - 16 Sep 21 UTC

Genesis-Nova

Resolution-By-Design Help Wanted Issue-Bug Area-TerminalControl Product-Terminal Priority-2

Windows Version 10.0.19042.0 Terminal Version 1.3.2651 Any other software?… None open at the time # Steps to reproduce Run windows terminal as administrator. Try to drag a file/folder into the terminal to copy its path to the terminal window. Does not work. # Expected behavior I expected drag and drop for files/folders into the terminal window to behave the same as a command prompt or powershell window, both behave as expected in non-admin or administrator permission instances of the aforementioned programs. # Actual behavior Path does not get copied during drag and drop into the terminal window, I just get the "deny" "not allowed" cursor icon when trying, unsure if this is related to the ongoing issue of being unable to rearrange _tabs_ while in an admin window or not as seen in #6661

github.com/microsoft/terminal

Unable to drag/drop a file to terminal with UAC turned off

opened 05:59PM - 01 Nov 21 UTC

closed 08:16PM - 04 Mar 22 UTC

d0j

Resolution-Duplicate Issue-Bug Area-TerminalControl Product-Terminal Needs-Tag-Fix Priority-2 Tracking-External

### Windows Terminal version (or Windows build number) Windows [Version 10.0.22…000.282] Terminal [Version 1.12.2931.0] ### Other Software None open at the time ### Steps to reproduce Run windows terminal as administrator. Try to drag a file/folder into the terminal to copy its path to the terminal window. Does not work. ### Expected Behavior I expected drag and drop for files/folders into the terminal window to behave the same as a command prompt or powershell window, both behave as expected in non-admin or administrator permission instances of the aforementioned programs. ### Actual Behavior Path does not get copied during drag and drop into the terminal window, I just get the "deny" "not allowed" cursor icon when trying, same problem as #7754 but ticket closed

github.com/microsoft/terminal

Still cannot drop files to Terminal running as admin

opened 03:29AM - 19 May 24 UTC

closed 02:00AM - 11 Jul 24 UTC

szx0427

Issue-Bug Needs-Author-Feedback Needs-Triage

### Windows Terminal version 1.20 ### Windows build number 10.0.19045.3930 #…## Other Software Windows File Explorer 10.0.19041.3758 ### Steps to reproduce First, ensure you logged in as an ordinary admin account (I've not tested on the built-in Administrator account yet but I guess the problem will remain.) **Method 1:** Set EnableLUA=1 (enable UAC), run Terminal with admin permission, drag a file from Desktop and drop it to Terminal. **Method 2:** Set EnableLUA=0 (disable UAC), directly run Terminal, and do the drag&drop. ### Expected Behavior I am simply expecting drag & drop can work. ### Actual Behavior A cursor indicating "unavailable" will be displayed through either method above. Such drag&drop is supported by the legacy conhost but not Windows Terminal. That's weird. Don't tell me this issue is a duplicate of #14946 or #15996 and that you have already fixed this in 1.18. I tested on both 1.18 and 1.20 only to find the problem remaining.

github.com/microsoft/terminal

Unable to Drag and Drop files from Windows Explorer

opened 01:25PM - 09 Apr 21 UTC

closed 09:53AM - 12 Apr 21 UTC

rainerzufalldererste

Resolution-Duplicate

### Windows Terminal version (or Windows build number) 1.6.10571.0 ### Other S…oftware Windows Explorer (Windows 10 Version 2004) ### Steps to reproduce 1. Open a Command Prompt tab in Windows Terminal 1.6.10571.0 2. Open a folder in Windows Explorer 3. Drag a file from Windows Explorer onto the Windows Terminal Window ### Expected Behavior The file path should appear at the cursor location, potentially wrapped in quotes if it contains a space. (I at least assume it should, since https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/904#issuecomment-585892437 states that the feature has been implemented) ### Actual Behavior Nothing happens. Before I let go of the mouse the "not-allowed" cursor is displayed.

So unfortunately there’s nothing we can do on our end to fix it, it’s on Microsoft’s side and has been an open issue for a long time. Sorry that’s not better news, but at least it’s not something specific to your setup.