Windows 10 gets a fresh command prompt and lots of hotkeys
Much has been written and much will be written about the Windows 10 announcement.
Windows 10, because 7 8 9.
— Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) September 30, 2014 I'm pretty stoked, and am playing with the Windows 10 Technical Preview now. I can see that there's lots of new enhancements to the shell, the Start Menu/ Screen, how Universal apps work, and so much more. But, let's focus on the "other shell." The console!
The console (conhost) that cmd.exe (often incorrectly but colloquially called the DOS Prompt) and PowerShell live within hasn't had much love in the last several years, IMHO. But then, suddenly, on stage at the Windows 10 announce we've got a VP showing folks that Ctrl-V (paste) works in the command prompt. Why would he do such a crazy thing?
remember when microsoft demoed the command prompt in windows on a stage in 2014
— spooky dan seifert (@dcseifert) September 30, 2014 Well, from what I can tell looking at the Preview, there's a LOT of cool Console goodness coming in Windows 10.
Here's a list of hotkeys in the Windows 10 Technical Preview console. This is just hotkeys! Be sure to explore the Properties dialog as well, resize, word wrapping, and more.
Text selection keys
These combinations interoperate with the mouse so you can start selecting with the mouse and continue with one of these commands, or vice versa.
| Selection Key Combination | Description |
| SHIFT + LEFT ARROW | Moves the cursor to the left one character, extending the selection. |
| SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW | Moves the cursor to the right one character, extending the selection. |
| SHIFT + UP ARROW | Selects text up line by line starting from the location of the insertion point. |
| SHIFT + DOWN ARROW | Extends text selection down one line, starting at the location of the insertion point. |
| SHIFT + END | If cursor is in current line being edited * First time extends selection to the last character in the input line. * Second consecutive press extends selection to the right margin. Else Selects text from the insertion point to the right margin. |
| SHIFT + HOME | If cursor is in current line being edited * First time extends selection to the character immediately after the command prompt. * Second consecutive press extends selection to the left margin. Else Extends selection to the left margin. |
| SHIFT + PAGE DOWN | Extends selection down one screen. |
| SHIFT + PAGE UP | Extends selection up one screen. |
| CTRL + SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW | Extends the selection one word to the right. |
| CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT ARROW | Extends the selection one word to the left. |
| CTRL + SHIFT + HOME | Extend selection to the beginning of the screen buffer. |
| CTRL + SHIFT + END | Extend selection to the end of the screen buffer. |
| CTRL + A | If cursor is in current line being edited (from first typed char to last type char) and line is not empty and any selection cursor is also within the line being edited Selects all text after the prompt. (phase 1) Else Selects the entire buffer. (phase 2) |
Extra Fun with CTRL + A
CTRL + A behavior is interesting. Regardless of the state of mark mode and quick edit mode, one of two things should happen. Either the entire buffer is selected, or (only in a single case) '2-Phase select' starts. 2-Phase select is the process where the first CTRL-A selects the characters to the right of the edit line prompt, and the second press selects the entire buffer.
Editing keys
As I mentioned above you can copy and paste text with the keyboard. When copying text, you might worry that CTRL + C has always been the BREAK command. This is a nice touch, it will still send the break signal to the running application when no text is selected. The first CTRL-C copies the text and clears the selection, and the second one signals the break. Nice attention to detail, IMHO.
| Editing Key Combination | Description |
| CTRL + V | Paste text into the command line. |
| SHIFT + INS | Paste text into the command line. |
| CTRL + C | Copy selected text to the clipboard. |
| CTRL + INS | Copy selected text to the clipboard. |
Mark mode keys
These keys function in mark mode. You can enter this mode by right-clicking anywhere in the console title bar and choosing Edit->Mark from the context menu as before, or via the new shortcut combination, CTRL-M. In the original console, mark mode resulted in block mode text selection. While in mark mode, you can hold down the ALT key at the start of a text selection command to use block mode in the new console. The selection key combinations above are all available in mark mode. CTRL + SHIFT + ARROW operations select by character and not by word while in mark mode.
| Mark Mode Key Combination | Description |
| CTRL + M | Enter "Mark Mode" to move cursor within window. |
| ALT | In conjunction with one of the selection key combinations, begins selection in block mode. |
| ARROW KEYS | Move cursor in the direction specified. |
| PAGE KEYS | Move cursor by one page in the direction specified. |
| CTRL + HOME | Move cursor to beginning of buffer. |
| CTRL + END | Move cursor to end of buffer. |
History navigation keys
| Navigation Key Combination | Description |
| CTRL + UP ARROW | Moves up one line in the output history. |
| CTRL + DOWN ARROW | Moves down one line in the output history. |
| CTRL + PAGE UP | Moves up one page in the output history. |
| CTRL + PAGE DOWN | Moves down one page in the output history. |
Other keys
| Other Key Combination | Description |
| CTRL + F | Opens "Find" in console dialog. |
| ALT + F4 | Close the console window, of course! |
If you are like me and also love the console and want it to get even better, head over to the Windows Command Prompt Uservoice and be heard!
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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Thanks! Love your tweets and blog, man!
I use it quite a bit as an IT guy but I can't imagine many others even knowing that it exists...
I think it was Win 7, where F2 on a file, selected the text of the file without the file extension...Anyway, that was worth the upgrade for me right there :)
Looking forward to Ctrl + V
Taki
There are few things that I run directly within cmd.exe. PowerShell has overwhelmingly taken its place.
Windows 10 doesn't seem to be replacing cmd.exe, just giving it a face lift. Is that everyone's take so far?
yes, i just verified it myself :)
Also, if the hotkeys are not working, you migh have to go into properties and then the experimental tab and enable all the new stuff. i suspect they were not enabled by default for me because i upgraded an exsisting win 8.1 install. (this worked flawlessly by the way, all apps works including desktop ones, VS, gdrove, dropbox, everything)
Thank you. I just installed the preview and saw it myself. Living in the future!
I'm sometimes in the habit of hitting Ctrl+C to clipboard copy multiple times in a row, due to some old application or PC -- don't remember which at this point -- that had a bad habit of not actually performing the copy on the first Ctrl+C press. Guess I'll need to break that habit!
It'll be weird, but nice, not having to do Alt+Space,E,P to do a clipboard paste in the console anymore!
Also, @Scott, you missed Ctrl+X (which oddly, copies, even in the prompt bug here) and Ctrl+Backspace (which isn't new, but ought to be on the list for completeness sake?)
I just got my VM into our domain, and logged in using my domain user, and the command line now works as mentioned in this post.
For some reason it seemed like the good old command line in the other user (using a Microsoft account for login). I wonder why there is such a difference.
I hope it saves me from jumping to Ubuntu.
Does anyone have any ideas of why this would get attention now? Is it part of their marketing effort to reach out to enterprise-y customers?
As someone who breaks into powershell almost daily, i'm excited to see it improve!
cmd.exe - still a compelling reason to use it for this instead of RE:
findstr /S /I /P pattern | findstring /i abc | findstring /v def | findstring /v ....
Glad they've realized that there is a place for a usable command line in a modern OS.
The "transparency" feature is also interesting.
Ctrl + Shift + Plus
Ctrl + Shift + Minus
key combination does it, even when "Enable experimental console features" is set to off.
I put this on my Surface pro 2, but I've not had much chance to play around with it yet. I'm interested to see if there are any new apis for being able to write a console replacement (or other rehosting use cases, for example a terminal pane in an IDE.)
I did just clean out some adware, maybe that has something to do with it.
DOS prompt is saying:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.4.9841]
(c) 2014 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Is that right for the win 10 preview build?
env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test"
Make sure you go into cmd's properties and the "experimental tab" and turn on the new keyboard shortcuts and opacity.
Hope this helps!
how toget offline preview builds of windows technical preview .
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Does this mean real-time resizing of the dialog without going into settings and having the terminal resize as well? Please say yes.