Alternative Windows shells, besides CMD.EXE?

Question

I don't like CMD.EXE, the built-in Windows terminal. Among its problems:

1. Hard to copy and paste.

2. Hard to resize the window.

3. Hard to open another window (no menu options do this).

4. Seems to always start in C:\Windows\System32, which is super useless.

5. Weird scrolling. Sometimes it scrolls down really far into blank space, and you have to scroll up to where the window is actually populated.

I love Cygwin, but the problem with Cygwin is that it runs different executables. The Cygwin Python is different than the Windows Python, they are linked against different libraries and stuff.

Thanks.

Solution 1

I am a fan of Cmder, a package including clink, conemu, msysgit, and some cosmetic enhancements.

http://cmder.net/

https://github.com/cmderdev/cmder

https://chocolatey.org/packages/Cmder

Solution 2

1. Hard to copy and paste.

   Not true. Enable QuickEdit, either in the properties of the shortcut, or in the properties of the CMD window (right-click on the title bar), and you can mark text directly. Right-click copies marked text into the clipboard. When no text is marked, a right-click pastes text from the clipboard.

   

2. Hard to resize the window.

   True. Console2 (see below) does not have this limitation.

3. Hard to open another window (no menu options do this).

   Not true. Use start cmd or define an alias if that's too much hassle:

   doskey nw=start cmd /k $*
   

4. Seems to always start in C:\Windows\System32, which is super useless.

   Not true. Or rather, not true if you define a start directory in the properties of the shortcut

   

   or by modifying the AutoRun registry value. Shift-right-click on a folder allows you to launch a command prompt in that folder.

5. Weird scrolling. Sometimes it scrolls down really far into blank space, and you have to scroll up to where the window is actually populated

   Never happened to me.

An alternative to plain CMD is Console2, which uses CMD under the hood, but provides a lot more configuration options.

Solution 3

At the moment there are three realy powerfull cmd.exe alternatives:

• cmder
  
• PowerCmd
• ComEmu
• Terminal for Windows 10
  

cmder is an enhancement off ConEmu and Clink

All have features like Copy & Paste, Window Resize per Mouse, Splitscreen, Tabs and a lot of other usefull features.

Solution 4

Try Clink. It's awesome, especially if you are used to bash keybindings and features.

(As already pointed out - there is a similar question: Is there a better Windows Console Window?)

View more solutions

Comments

[Mark]

possible duplicate of Is there a better Windows Console Window?

[SerMetAla]

Lefteris E: Windows Powershell is not much better than CMD.EXE. It also has copy/paste problems, for instance. Unlike CMD.EXE, Powershell always seems to start in H:\.

[mojo]

I like the PowerShell ISE because copy/paste works and it has (infinite?) scrollback. You can also open multiple tabs in one window and can name the window and the tabs.

[mojo]

#4: You can change the working directory in the shortcut to cmd.exe. Otherwise, it always starts in %HOMEPATH% for me.

[mojo]

#1: Piping output to clip.exe will copy. Paste is still (nearly) impossible using only the keyboard.

[foxidrive]

4dos/4nt which is now TCC/LE at jpsoft.com is an enhanced cmd shell. Can I ask with your erratic scrolling - do you use a logitech mouse?

[foxidrive]

FWIW - with a logitech mouse I loaded the setpoint logitech software and set the scroll to 6 lines and the scolling now behaves.

[phuclv]

all of the problems have been fixed in Windows 10

[gman]

There's a mis-understanding of what cmd.exe is. cmd.exe is a shell. It will run in any console it's asked to run in. cmd.exe is the program that interprets batch files and command you type. It is NOT the program that actually lets you type, displays text, let's you copy and paste, scroll, etc... As one example an alternative to cmd.exe is powershell. Both, by default run in the default windows console. Console alternatives include most of the answers here but they still run cmd.exe.

[Henke]

What I miss the most with cmd.exe is Ctrl + R to get the command history. This is easily fixed by installing CLink. At the very bottom of https://superuser.com/questions/1248999#1581575 there is a direct link to the installer of CLink.

[foxidrive]

Weird scrolling happens with nonstandard window sizes here too. 120x50 and it goes wacky.

[Ansgar Wiechers]

Like I said, never happend to me, and I usually have my CMD windows resized to 100x50 with 3000 lines scrollback buffer.

[Edwin Yip]

Wow, the Quick Edit mode should have been enabled by default by the Windows system...

[Siro Mateos]

Hard to copy and paste not true? Try to select and copy more than one line of text... that rectangular selection thing is the most shamefully useless "feature" ever!

[Ansgar Wiechers]

A downvote because you dislike rectangular selection? You gotta be kidding me. *shakes head*

[Dave Richardson]

I am a keyboard user, I want to do standard cut-paste keyboard combinations (i.e. ctrl-Insert/shift-Insert) and that is not supported. Besides which, as standard you still have to go into a menu and set 'Quick Edit'. Even in Windows 10 this is the case, MS have had decades to make this better. Difficult may not be the word, but it is non-standard and convoluted,

[Ansgar Wiechers]

CMD (and COMMAND.COM before it) have had this behavior for more than a quarter of a century now, so I'd say it's pretty much the established standard for Windows systems. Get used to it.

[Xtremefaith]

WOW!! This is a thing of beauty

[rock3t]

@Eric By any chance you know/have the color schema for Terminator?

[Berbare]

Is there any way to use the Start in and Quick edit mode (among other) settings on the original cmd.exe, instead of the shortcut? start cmd bypasses the two shortcut settings you provided as solution (very useful, anyway, thank you)

[Ansgar Wiechers]

@Berbare As mentioned in my answer you can also right-click on the title bar of a CMD window you started (e.g. via start cmd) and change the settings there. That should update the default configuration. Or you could change the setting in the registry.

[Smart Manoj]

slant.co/topics/1552/~terminal-emulators-for-windows

[Mayur Patil]

Me too ! Cmder awesome one.

[Yay295]

@SiroMateos Only five years late, but if you hold 'alt' while selecting text it uses the other selection mode.

[Mikhail]

Win10 Terminal is so easy, simple, and smooth. Love it, thanks.

[Mustafa R]

Avoid conEmu, it's quite annoying. Example, multiline commands don't work when pasting. paste.pics/GM774 Don't have close button on tabs, have to right click, then close, yet after another cofirmation. Asks for more unnecessary confirmations other than while closing, e.g. when pasting multiple lines.