Christian Droulers

Quake style command line in Windows

UPDATE

I’m now using CMDER instead of Console2. Works much better and has great customization from the start.

Content

For those who like to have a command line handy while developing (as you should!) and dislike cmd.exe (for extremely valid reasons, I am sure), I have found a good way.

Steps:

1. Setup Console (it’s a feature-full replacement for the boring cmd.exe).
   1. Download it here.
   2. Extract it where you want. e.g. C:\console
   3. Make sure it’s accessible from your path. If you put console in C:\console, just add “;C:\console" to your current one.
   4. Get the pre-made configuration file console.xml in my Google Code repository and copy it in the Console directory.
2. Setup AutoHotKey (it’s a tool to set global shortcuts and more in Windows)
   1. Download and install it.
   2. Get the other configuration file, quake-terminal.ahk from the same repository and copy it where you like, the AutoHotKey directory is not a bad idea
   3. Finally, put a link to the quake-terminal.ahk in Startup folder of the start menu so you don’t have to run it manually every time you start your computer.
3. You are all set! The script is set up to use Ctrl + # (key to the left of “1”), but it can be changed if you edit the file quake-terminal.ahk.

The final result!

Final thoughts

You can find the original tutorial here.

Bonus: Install cygwin and add the bin path to your environment path for awesome unixy tools!