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What are the best (i.e. bug free) Multi-tab command prompts in Windows?
They have them for Linux but Windows never seems to come out with one.
leeand00
Posted 2009-08-27T14:35:05.047
Reputation: 14 882
Multi-tab command prompt in Windows?
Answers
46
Check out Console.
Console is a Windows console window enhancement. Console features include: multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types, alpha and color-key transparency, configurable font, different window styles
th3dude
Posted 2009-08-27T14:35:05.047
Reputation: 9 189
This one is way better than Cmder which eat a lot of RAM and is slow – Alex – 2018-12-11T14:17:31.850
1@leeand00 Go Stillers! :) – leeand00 – 2009-08-27T14:37:34.637
2The issue I had with Console is that sometimes (read: Many) when minimized it wouldn't restore properly. – Nate – 2009-08-27T14:41:52.727
4Didn't the OP mention "bug-free"? Last I looked Console was pretty horribly in that respect. – Joey – 2009-08-27T15:43:34.020
4Yes,it's trully horribe...and all editions of this software are marked as beta. – Jichao – 2009-11-04T01:11:33.223
It does not work well on my windows xp(chinese edition) – Jichao – 2009-11-04T01:14:24.987
6
I tried to use Console2 (last release dates 2011) to run Cygwin 64 bits in my Windows 7 64 bits desktop and it didn't work. Researching a bit I was able to find ConsoleZ which is a fork of the former that is properly updated and was able to support the environment I described.
– Chuim – 2013-12-04T22:36:21.863Console2 sometimes hide the last row from my view. And I can't figure out how to mark and copy in Console2! – Phuah Yee Keat – 2014-06-04T07:28:24.420
136
Sorry for the self-promotion, I'm the author of another Console Emulator, not mentioned here.
ConEmu is 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 (Vista+) or as selected user
- Windows 7 Jump lists and Progress on taskbar
- Integration with DosBox (useful in 64bit systems to run DOS applications)
- Smooth resize, maximized and fullscreen window modes
- Scrollbar initially hidden, may be revealed by mouseover or checkbox in settings
- Optional settings (e.g. pallette) 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
- Quake/Tilda style
- Change cursor position in command prompt (cmd, powershell) with mouse click (build 120618+)
- Works on Chinese editions of Windows :)
Far Manager users will acquire shell style drag-n-drop, thumbnails and tiles in panles, tabs for editors and viewers, true colors and font styles (italic/bold/underline).
Try it. You may read some comments on StackOverflow.
Maximus
Posted 2009-08-27T14:35:05.047
Reputation: 19 395
2Awesome tool! I wanted to up vote but then found out I already up voted long back in the past :) Wish I could cast 2 up votes here. – Anmol Saraf – 2016-02-23T21:00:01.687
1The best of the conhost replacements! – Joe Coder – 2016-07-16T02:25:22.103
1Top answer! I love this tool! Thank you so much for sharing! – MiKE – 2016-10-12T06:21:04.010
1Great tool! The split view is perfect (wish it was a bit easier to configure), but great for my needs – Rick Love – 2016-12-30T05:03:17.283
The tool show user.name@pc_name before the folder. Can I remove that? And for rename a consola the shortcut say Apps-R I now windows key but which one is Apps? – Juan Carlos Oropeza – 2018-01-17T19:01:02.150
conemu is a nightmare to configure. I am one of the first people to ever use it before anyone even hear of it and there are some simple things I can never configure to this day like changing startup dir. I would choose it with caution – samayo – 2019-08-16T23:39:01.757
Does it provide reverse history search like in Linux console ? – Vihaan Verma – 2012-08-29T07:07:51.920
What do you mean by "history"? Console output? Current version allows searching only in visible part of screen. Searching in whole buffer (scrollable area) is in plans. – Maximus – 2012-08-29T09:40:58.290
3no I mean on Linux you could press CNTRL + R and type a command. It will search in the history of previously executed command and provide suggestion. It pretty handy to execute long command with few keys. – Vihaan Verma – 2012-08-29T09:54:22.543
Refer to windows console hotkeys. F7 or F3 for example. This is standard for windows. ConEmu has no need to override them. Alternatively, there are tcc/le, clink and Far Manager. – Maximus – 2012-08-29T11:23:00.607
1@VihaanVerma the <Ctrl-R> option you are talking about refers to bash and GNU readline. The terminal emulator, like ConEmu or xterm, shouldn't affect its operation. <Ctrl-R> is totally separate and unrelated to this. – Ehtesh Choudhury – 2013-01-28T06:43:23.710
Norton flags this is as "Suspicious.Cloud.7.EP". – starbeamrainbowlabs – 2013-07-28T12:13:41.703
@starbeamrainbowlabs - False report – Maximus – 2013-07-28T15:51:09.027
@Maximus You mean false positive? – starbeamrainbowlabs – 2013-07-28T19:31:51.590
@starbeamrainbowlabs Yes. – Maximus – 2013-07-29T06:37:33.567
11
I realize this is 6 years after you posted the question. I've found PowerShell ISE to be an elegant solution.
There's a slight 2 second delay to start it up, but it's incredibly powerful and suitable as a tabbed command prompt in a Windows 7/8/10 environment.
It has a cleaner UI than many of the alternatives listed above, and it's built for PowerShell.
HSuke
Posted 2009-08-27T14:35:05.047
Reputation: 411
Thanks, PowerISO is pretty when you have nothing else. I just realized that I needed split view more than multi-tab, so I prefer ConEmu. – Hendy Irawan – 2018-01-12T07:08:37.230
agree .. dont know why windows doesn't make it default – Vikash – 2019-06-10T09:53:42.753
9
PromptPal is the best I have ever used.
Taptronic
Posted 2009-08-27T14:35:05.047
Reputation: 911
2Dislike it since it is not free :( – xiao – 2011-04-11T04:00:16.297
3eh..it's not free... – leeand00 – 2009-08-27T15:51:24.410
28"What are the best (i.e. bug free) Multi-tab command prompts in Windows?" That is the question that was posed. WHERE do the downvoters see the word FREE? – Taptronic – 2012-02-28T12:37:42.003
7
I think PowerCmd is a nice multitab cmd prompt software as well. It is shareware and has all the features I expected.
You can get it from http://www.powercmd.com/
xiao
Posted 2009-08-27T14:35:05.047
Reputation: 179
Doesn't work with python interactive shell. – Amit Tomar – 2017-04-12T08:42:48.717
That looks pretty cool xiao. I'll have to check that out. Thanks! – leeand00 – 2011-04-11T12:12:31.157
NOTE: It's not free! It's a shareware. where did you get a free version? – Mason Zhang – 2011-04-13T14:10:35.600
2I just wanted to note that I have been using PowerCMD for a year and it is extremely buggy. A lot of interactive programs like irb, p4, php etc do not run properly and cause you to have to close out. It also constantly spits out the system environment variables. It's very annoying and I am uninstalling as I type this. – None – 2011-08-01T13:55:55.627
He asked for BUG free. Not necessarily MONEY free....... – Taptronic – 2012-07-06T13:48:55.543
I confirm this is the easiest to install and quickest to get you started (tested console and conemu but either they don't ahve installer and second needs extra setup before the can run) – Abdessamad Idrissi – 2014-04-30T10:37:25.643
6
What about cmder? It seems to be very popular.
Anton Kalcik
Posted 2009-08-27T14:35:05.047
Reputation: 181
what does cmder do? how's it a good option? What's it do better than these alternatives? – Journeyman Geek – 2017-03-03T00:24:32.533
It has a option to enable quake 3 style slidedown. – sasdev – 2017-04-25T13:23:44.740
1Cmder is based on ComEmu which the interface is better. – Nick Tsai – 2018-06-06T03:14:04.547
5
I recommend MobaXterm: it is a bash command prompt for Windows packaged in a multi-tab terminal with a lot of extra features (SSH, macros, bookmarks and much more).
Didier
Posted 2009-08-27T14:35:05.047
Reputation: 789
4
Windows native tab support will be released hopefully with 2018 fall Windows update.
nkef
Posted 2009-08-27T14:35:05.047
Reputation: 373
This hasn't appeared to ship yet unfortunately. – William – 2018-09-17T02:51:02.547
4
My recommendation (favorite commands is a killer feature):
Features:
- Favorites commands
- Export to HTML and RTF
- Copy,Paste,Cut...
- Customizable font style and color
- Tabbed working with multi cmd.exe.
- Fast folder switch.
- Portable
Not really good: 1) TAB key autocompletion doesn't work anymore (it works with Windows 7's cmd.exe) 2) Try BACKSPACE key: it will even erase the prompt C:\Windows> etc. I didn't go further but it seems that there's lot of little UI oddities. – Basj – 2018-01-23T15:55:28.463
@Molly Exporting as HTML! That is a sweet feature! – leeand00 – 2009-08-27T15:52:51.613
I'm going to have to give that a try. – leeand00 – 2009-08-27T15:55:22.607
2
I recent but very mature already entrant to the Windows Consoles arena is Babun https://github.com/babun/babun It works similar to what you would find in a Bash-based console on a *nux machine but on any Windows OS, as a big plus all the familiar tools as ls, find, grep and more are there.
Arthur
Posted 2009-08-27T14:35:05.047
Reputation: 179
While this looks like a good tool, the question asked specifically about a multi-tab command prompt. It doesn't look like Babun supports tabs. I downvoted this answer as it does not answer the question. I'd be happy to remove my downvote if Babun does in fact support tabs. – Matt – 2018-01-28T21:55:06.690
This project is also discontinued! – Dwza – 2019-04-17T08:30:50.317
Windows Terminal is on preview and available now. I learned about options here that seems to have more features. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-terminal-preview/9n0dx20hk701?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
– Ricardo – 2020-01-18T14:46:26.483"but Windows never seems to come out with one." That's because the console subsystem is a second-class citizen in Windows, at least in terms of window interaction and UX. – afrazier – 2011-04-14T03:55:14.367
@afrazier I should would like to know why, it's so much more powerful than a GUI. – leeand00 – 2011-04-14T11:55:08.573
Here's a thread on StackOverflow
– Casebash – 2014-05-08T06:02:20.857