Windows Command Line
Insights from the teams behind Windows Terminal, PowerToys, WinGet, and WSL
Latest posts
What’s new for WSL in Windows 10 version 1903?
The next Windows update is coming soon and we’re bringing exciting new updates to WSL with it! These include accessing the Linux file system from Windows, and improvements to how you manage and configure your distros in the command line. Accessing Linux files from Windows In the past, creating and changing Linux files from Windows resulted in losing files or corrupting data. Making this possible has been a highly requested and long anticipated feature. We’re proud to announce you can now easily access all the files in your Linux distros from Windows. Linux Files inside of File Explorer The best way to get sta...
New Experimental Console Features
As of Windows 10 build 18298, when you open the properties page of any Console window, you’ll notice an additional “Terminal” tab. Click on this tab and you’ll see several new settings for some experimental features we’re working on for future OS releases: Important Note: These settings are "experimental", because in certain scenarios, it's possible that they might not behave like you would expect them to, may not make it into the next OS release, and may change completely before we ship! But have fun with them anyway and let us know how you get on – we’d love to hear your feedback. Let’s outline each of th...
Windows Command-Line: Unicode and UTF-8 Output Text Buffer
In this post, we'll discuss the improvements we've been making to the Windows Console's internal text buffer, enabling it to better store and handle Unicode and UTF-8 text. Posts in the Windows Command-Line series: This list will be updated as more posts are published: [Source: David Farrell’s “Building a UTF-8 encoder in Perl”] The most visible aspect of a Command-Line Terminal is that it displays the text emitted from your shell and/or Command-Line tools and apps, in a grid of mono-spaced cells – one cell per character/symbol/glyph. Great, that’s simple. How hard can it be, right – it’s just l...
What’s New for WSL in the Windows 10 October 2018 Update
On October 2, 2018, Microsoft announced that the availability of the** Windows 10 October 2018 Update**. After the update was paused, the rollout resumed on November 13, 2018. You can read more about the Windows 10 quality approach here. This post, however, will cover what you can expect to see in WSL for the October 2018 Update, Windows 10 version 1809, and from recent Windows Insiders builds. You can find additional information on features and fixes in our detailed release notes. Additional Linux Distributions now available in the Microsoft Store We’re excited to share two additional distros in the Microsoft ...
Windows Console: CTRL + Scroll to zoom and Dark Theme Scrollbar
Many of you have been asking for Windows Console to support zoom. Well, today is your lucky day! 😜 Install today's Windows 10 Insider build #18272 and you can! How does one perform this magic? After upgrading to Win10 Insider build #18272 or later, open any Console window (E.g. launch , , , etc.) and then hit and hold CTRL while scrolling your mouse wheel / trackpad. The observant will also notice that Console now honors your Light/Dark Theme settings: If you are using the Dark Theme, your Console's scroll-bar is also dark-themed! We call this the Halloween 2018 Feature :D Enjoy!
Re-Open-Sourcing MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0
In March 2014, Microsoft released the source code to MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 via the Computer History Museum. The announcement also contains a brief history of how MS-DOS came to be for those new to the subject, and ends with many links to related articles and resources for those interested in learning more. Today, we're re-open-sourcing MS-DOS on GitHub. Why? Because it's much easier to find, read, and refer to MS-DOS source files if they're in a GitHub repo than in the original downloadable compressed archive file. ** Important: As noted on the repo readme, the source files are being (re)published for histor...
Using WSL in an Enterprise
Recently, customers in an enterprise environment have asked if there is a way to install WSL without an internet connection. These companies had some machines that would benefit from having WSL, but don't have an internet connection for security, logistics, or other reasons. Enter: The Microsoft Store for Business We (the WSL team) took a look into this issue and found that enterprises could use the Microsoft Store for Business to help deploy WSL distros to their company, including offline distribution! The Microsoft Store for Business is essentially another way to interact with the Microsoft Store, but from an...
Windows Command-Line: Introducing the Windows Pseudo Console (ConPTY)
In this, the fourth post in the Windows Command-Line series, we'll discuss the new Windows Pseudo Console (ConPTY) infrastructure and API - why we built it, what it's for, how it works, how to use it, and more.
Windows Command-Line: Inside the Windows Console
Welcome to the third post in the Windows Command-Line series. In this post, we'll start to dig into the internals of the Windows Console and Command-Line, what it is, what it does ... and what it doesn't do!