For a long time Windows 10 hasn’t had a great command line interface. As a result, developers and system admins have installed third-party options to emulate Unix style and other kinds of consoles. And while it’s possible to get a bash shell inside Windows 10 now, many users still prefer a more configurable terminal emulator. Check out the best terminal emulators for Windows 10 below.
1. ZOC Terminal
One of the best tools for people needing to access data on Unix accounts from Windows, ZOC Terminal, may not be free ($79.99), but it’s still a great value for more advanced users.
One of its key perks are tabs, so you can have several Terminal sessions going on at once across SSH, telnet, QNX, and other terminals. It’s brimming with commands and is highly customizable to suit your personal terminal-tinkering style.
Its emulations are robust and complete, offering features like mouse and keyboard support, print-through and line graphics. And it’s a cinch to search for specific bits of text in your work, then highlight them.
2. cmder
cmder is a well-known portable terminal emulator for Windows 10 that was built from the “pure frustration” caused by the lack of a good alternative in Windows. It’s built on top of another well-known console emulator, ConEmu, and enhanced with Clink. Clink extends the power of ConEmu, adding shell features like bash-style completion. It’s broadly compatible, working with msysgit, PowerShell, cygwin and mintty, bringing Unix capabilities to Windows.
Since it’s completely portable, you can run cmder off a USB drive that you use on various machines without installing files on local hard drives, making it a support specialist’s best friend. As a bonus, it ships with the much-loved Monokai color scheme to coordinate your hacking with Sublime Text.
3. ConEmu
ConEmu is a Windows console emulator with tabs, multiple windows and a variety of customization options. Its lineage reaches way back in history: ConEmu was initially created as a companion to Far Manager, a file and archive manager released for Windows in 1996. But despite its age, the software is continuously developed.
The emulator provides a deep menu of settings to tweak and hotkeys to assign, drawing in keyboard warriors from Vim and Emacs. ConEmu in compatible with many of the same popular shells as cmder, like cmd.exe, PowerShell, cygwin, PuTTY and others. If you install a DOS emulator like DosBox, you can run DOS applications in a 64-bit environment. But because ConEmu isn’t a shell, it doesn’t include helpful shell features like remote connections and tab completion. While it retains many die-hard fans, ConEmu might not be the best console emulator for new users.
4. Console
Console is a terminal emulator and console enhancement for Windows 10 that focuses on direct use and simple interaction. It provides full command-line capabilities, and its straight-forward design hides a significant degree of power and customization. It integrates with all the major shells and lets you customize window styles, transparency, fonts and text colors. But Console isn’t as all-spanning as ConEmu, so very advanced users might find themselves limited by the software.
5. Babun
Babun comes with bash and zsh out of the box, providing tools that both beginner and advanced users can use immediately. It’s built on top of Cygwin, porting a Unix-style interface to Windows 10. You can use oh-my-zsh to configure zsh’s wide variety of options, giving you greater control over your shell’s functionality that you’ll get in other applications. It also includes the pact package manager and HTTP proxying out the box.
6. Mintty
If you only use Cygwin for your Windows shell, then Mintty is an excellent console emulator. In fact, Mintty is installed as the default terminal emulator. Like the other options on this list, Mintty provides a collection of additional features like drag-and-drop, full screen, copy and paste and theme support. And it also works with MSYS and Msys2.
Conclusion
Cmder is probably the best bet for users looking for a capable but manageable terminal emulator. Users seeking a more powerful experience can get their fix with ConEmu or splash out a bit more for ZOC Terminal.
This article was first published in August 2017 and was updated in March 2018.
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Windows' built-in command line programs aren't that great on their own. Soalan kbat sejarah tingkatan 5. To make them better, we like to use third-party terminal programs, our favorite being the customizable and free Console.
Note: For this App Directory entry, we're talking about separate terminal programs, not shells. Windows' Command Prompt, PowerShell, and Cygwin are all different shells that come with their own programs. The programs we're talking about today are separate programs that use shells already on your system, which is why you won't find PowerShell and Cygwin among the competitors.
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Console2
Platform: Windows
Price: Free
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Features
- Provides a fully-functional command line interface (CLI) that can run any existing shell on Windows—like PowerShell, Cygwin, or even PuTTY
- Open multiple tabs using any shell you want
- Text editor-like text selection
- Multiple window styles
- Configurable fonts, colors and transparency
- Lots of customizable hotkeys for opening new tabs, switching between tabs, and scrolling
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Where It Excels
Console is simple and easy to use while at the same time being much more configurable than any single-shelled program, while holding the ability to run any of those shells in a new tab—whether it be the UNIX-like Cygwin, Windows' very useful PowerShell, SSH king PuTTY, or the standard Windows Command Prompt. You can configure what the window looks like, open multiple tabs, and even run a number of different shells at once in the same window. It also has quite a few options for tweaking the behavior of the app, like how it selects text, which hotkeys and mouse buttons do what, and so on. If you ever do any work in a terminal on Windows, this program will make your life a little bit easier.
Where It Falls Short
If you're a very heavy or very advanced terminal user, you may want something even more powerful than Console. Console isn't the most feature-filled terminal on the block, but that's a good thing—most other terminal programs are way more powerful, cluttered, and expensive than most users need. So, if you're looking for something with built-in search or line numbers, you may want to check out the competition section below.
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The Competition
The competition for apps like this is pretty thin on Windows. If you don't like Console, you'll probably want to check out PowerCmd as your next option. It's a bit pricier at $30, but it contains a few extra features like the ability to search your consoles, view multiple sessions in one big window, line numbering, and add bookmarks on certain lines. It's definitely not an app that most terminal users will need, and it's a bit slower than something like Console, but advanced users will probably prefer it.
If you're a really advanced user that requires a powerful terminal every day, you might want to try out Take Command. It's very expensive ($99), but also insanely powerful, adding more than 140 new commands and 460 internal functions and variables to the standard Windows command prompt (not to mention a built-in file manager and debugger). It's definitely geared more toward developers than end users, but it's worth a mention for its sheer power alone.
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Lastly, if the only shells you use are Cygwin or MSYS/MinGW, you might prefer Mintty over Console. Cygwin's default program isn't very great, and Mintty gives you a few extra options over Console, but doesn't let you run other shells (like the Command Prompt or PowerShell), so it isn't quite as useful. Mintty is also free.
Do you have a favorite terminal program we didn't mention? Be sure to let us know about it in the comments.
Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.
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