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I want to change the color scheme of the command prompt in Windows, ideally a default of 0a (green color on black background).

How can I change this?

Gaff
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Wasim Shaikh
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5 Answers5

15

Open a Command Prompt, click the icon (top-left), select Properties.

alt text

Choose Colors, adjust to taste. It will ask you if you want to save the colour for future settings - choose yes.

alt text

Gaff
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stijn
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    +1 You wrote almost exactly the same as me so I just added my pictures to your answer instead. – Nifle Oct 15 '10 at 11:26
  • thanks.. I should note ths only works for cmd.exe itsef though: if you have a program spawning a console window you have it has the default colors unless told otherwise. – stijn Oct 15 '10 at 11:34
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    By the way, the popup colors are used when you press F2, F4, F7, or F9 at the command prompt. – Bavi_H Oct 16 '10 at 02:47
14

Using the Command Prompt type regedit to open the Windows Registry, then set the following entry to the color combination you prefer (DefaultColor):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Command Processor/
Set DefaultColor to 0a
Gaff
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ArBR
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    This is actually the best answer. It's the only solution that works when running Command Prompt as "cmd" in the Run dialogue box, not just from a shortcut. Just goes to show the best answer won't get as many votes without a picture. People like pretty pictures! – Austin ''Danger'' Powers Apr 09 '13 at 18:03
  • This is the answer I was looking for as well... affects _all_ subsequent cmd calls. Also worth noting that the first value you enter is the background color and the second is the text color. Colors are indexed 0-f on the command dialog properties for reference - you can also customize these. – J E Carter II Nov 15 '14 at 01:01
  • Great, this works for me. – asifaftab87 Feb 20 '16 at 04:58
6

Go to a command prompt and type help color then press ENTER.

You can also select the command prompt icon and change its properties.

Linker3000
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  1. Open the Command Prompt
  2. Right click on the title bar
  3. Select Defaults
  4. Move to the Colors tab.
Gaff
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aman
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@reg add "hkcu\software\microsoft\command processor" /v defaultcolor /t reg_dword /d 0xa /f

put it inside a .bat file and execute it, or type straight in command prompt it will make default shell (cmd.exe) color green for current user to roll back, change 0xa back to 0

ps:

it's based on ArceBrito's answer, i just couldn't comment

catastrophic failure
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