Windows "cmd" Replacements

Question

Resizing is one of the biggest problems I face with the default Windows command prompt. Are there are any free/open source alternatives available?

Answer 1

ConEmu is an opensource console emulator with tabs, which represents multiple consoles and simple GUI applications as one customizable GUI window.

Initially, the program was designed to work with Far Manager (my favorite shell replacement - file and archive management, command history and completion, powerful editor). But ConEmu can be used with any other console application or simple GUI tools (like PuTTY for example). ConEmu is a live project, open to suggestions.

A brief excerpt from the long list of options:

• Use any font installed in the system, or copied to a folder of the program (ttf, otf, fon, bdf)
• Run selected tabs as Administrator (Windows Vista or later) or as selected user
• Windows 7 Jump lists and Progress on taskbar
• Integration with DosBox (useful on 64-bit systems to run DOS applications)
• Smooth resize, maximized and full screen window modes
• Scrollbar initially hidden, may be revealed by mouseover or checkbox in settings
• Optional settings (e.g. palette) for selected applications
• User friendly text and block selection (from keyboard or mouse), copy, paste, text search in console
• ANSI X3.64 and Xterm 256 color
• In last alpha, build (120802), a split-screen feature was added (first try, may be buggy)

Far Manager users will acquire shell style drag-n-drop, thumbnails and tiles in panels, tabs for editors and viewers, true colors and font styles (italic/bold/underline).

_{(Sorry for the self-promotion, I'm the author of another free and open source Console Emulator, not mentioned here.)}

Answer 2

ColorConsole is my 'Windows “cmd” replacement' of choice (actually it's just a GUI wrapper around cmd.exe, not a replacement in the strict sense).

Features:

Favorites commands

Export to HTML and RTF

Copy, Paste, Cut, etc.

Change font style and color

Tabbed Interface with multi cmd.exe

Fast folder switch

And of course it is resizeable to your likings :)

ColorConsole is freeware and portable.

Answer 3

console2 is an open-source console window enhancement.

Note that it's not technically a replacement for cmd.exe as it still uses it in the back to do the real work. Actually it can be configured to use other shells such as bash or powershell.

Answer 4

You don't need a replacement because you can do what the you want with the Windows "cmd" window using the built in options. If you right click on the title bar you can get to a properties dialog where you can control the fonts, window size and colours etc.

And as Alex points out you can apply the settings to all future command windows, not just the current window, so they'll all be the size you want.

Answer 5

The intuitive "mode" command lets you change the size:

mode 250,80 

just about fills my 1680x1050 screen. You could have a batch file that says

cmd.exe /k "mode 250,80"

and launch from there.

Answer 6

It is not cmd you want to replace, it is the console itself. cmd.exe is like /bin/bash - reads commands, prints output. Windows Console is like xterm - displays everything inside a window. These two are independent of each other.

I like "console".

Answer 7

Been using 4NT and Take Command from jpsoftware.com for years and years, that is, when I'm on Windows.

Otherwise, it is "the one true shell" - tcsh!

Answer 8

I used console 2, powercmd and colorconsole, but neither of them can run most of the external commands, like connecting to another computer using telnet or searching within output by piping to find and sadly, as far as I know there is no way to fullscreen console applications in 64-bit editions of Windows, even if you disable your graphic card driver.

Answer 9

TCC/LE is a free compatible replacement for CMD, and works very nicely within Console2.