Opening a command line terminal from Windows Explorer

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who gets irritated when opening a terminal window from the Windows start menu that the first thing I have to do is cd out of my user directory into wherever I want to be.

On my old Win 7 machine I had an Explorer extension that let me open a command line in the selected directory. I don't have that on my current Win 10 machine. Neither do I want to do some registry editing nonsense to enable it.

So imagine the joy when I discovered this hack yesterday:

  1. In Windows Explorer select the folder where you want to open a command line terminal window. Select the folder in the left hand pane.

  2. Type cmd in the address bar.

  3. Press enter, and voila!

Wow ... wish I'd known that a few years ago.

Now, if I'm the only one in the world who doesn't know this already apologies for wasting your time!

And yes, I'm still using cmd.exe, and no, I don't use PowerShell. And yes, I'm an old fart resisting change. But I've checked and it works for PowerShell too:

Which is nice.

Location: Wales

Comments

  1. Anonymous11:43 am

    cd /d D:\Dev\Electronics

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jürgen Krämer12:12 pm

    doskey cd=cd /d $*

    cd D:\Dev\Electronics

    ReplyDelete
  3. Delphidabbler12:28 pm

    Thanks both. I'll be using that.

    You learn summat new every day!

    ReplyDelete
  4. EMB4:27 pm

    Shift+RightClick
    Works in any folder, in any place.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Delphidabbler6:59 am

    Thx, but while Shift-RightClick used to work on my previous Windows install, on my current Win 10 20H2 it doesn't! Judging by various posts on Stack Exchange etc, others have the same prob :(

    ReplyDelete
  6. vhanla9:21 pm

    As a keyboard user (mostly), I would select any folder then press Alt+D or Ctrl+L, type any command there, like cmd or cmd /c , or wt -d . to start windows terminal, or git clone <...>. Another way was to use quick access toolbar (Alt+) customized, when it had CMD instead of PowerShell, now in Windows 11, it is gone Ribbon's quick access toolbar.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Delphidabbler7:41 am

    Thx vhanla

    I'll try some of those keyboard shortcuts & see if I can remember them!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Gerry1:25 am

    If you install Windows Terminal, you get an "Open in Windows Terminal" option.
    You can set Windows Terminal to use cmd as the default

    ReplyDelete
  9. Delphidabbler7:03 am

    Ta Gerry.

    I'll investigate that

    ReplyDelete

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