Windows command prompt tricks

For privacy reasons, you might want to create a folder that cannot be edited, moved, copied, or deleted by any random person that gets access to your computer. To do this, navigate to the directory where you want to create this folder or open the command prompt directly in it with the first tip in this article. So, what if you want to delete this folder? Make sure the files in the folder are backed up.

Select Yes in the next prompt and it'll open a new window of the command prompt with administrative privileges. So, what if you want to hide a folder? If the old-school black and white colors of the command line look boring to you, you can change them to your desired color scheme. To do this, launch the command prompt and run color -help. This will show you available colors represented by numbers and alphabets.

You can change the background and font colors to. For example, color 02 leaves the background color black and changes the font color to green. Simply launch the Command Prompt, and change your working directory to the folder where your files are. This will encrypt all the files that were inside the folder. Note : If you try and open these encrypted files, they will open normally for you, however, any other user will not be able to view the files, unless they log in using your account.

So make sure that you have a password set. The Command Prompt window can be unexciting with the default black background and light gray text color.

But Windows does allow you to change these colors to suit yourself and make things a bit more intriguing. It does reflect the current working directory that the user is in, but it sure could use some customization. If you would like the prompt in your cmd window to say something other than the default, you can use the following trick.

Hit Enter, and you will see the prompt in the cmd window change to your custom text. Fortunately, you can change that too. If you want, you can also copy this output into a text file for easy viewing later. Simply follow the steps outlined below: Launch Command Prompt, and navigate to the directory where your target folder resides. You can now check that the folder is indeed hidden inside Windows Explorer and can not be seen by anyone.

Copy Command Output to Clipboard If you have ever tried to copy stuff off the Command Prompt, you must have realized that it is exceedingly difficult, not to mention un-intuitive. List all Installed Programs Another cool trick on the Command Prompt involves listing out all of the Windows 10 apps and programs that are installed on your PC.

This is particularly helpful if you need to uninstall a program using the Command Prompt. Hit Enter, and you will see a list of all the programs that are installed on your PC. You can also use wmic to uninstall programs, directly from the cmd window. This is a really handy trick, especially if the folders you want to access are buried deep inside the filesystem. To open a cmd window inside a directory, just follow the steps below: Open the directory in Windows Explorer.

A command window will open inside the directory you had opened in Windows Explorer. Use the nslookup command or the ping command, but the former is probably faster. First, let's use the nslookup command to find the IP address of lifewire. Just execute nslookup lifewire. Don't confuse any private IP addresses that also show up in the nslookup results alongside the public IP address of lifewire.

Now let's try using the ping command to find it. Execute ping lifewire. Don't worry if the ping command "times out" during execution; all we needed here was the IP address. You can use the same procedure with any website or any hostname on your local network. A number of these Command Prompt tricks have dealt with making copying and pasting easier.

So, how about an even easier way to copy from the Command Prompt and a secret way to easily paste? Just right-click on the Command Prompt title bar and select Properties. Enabling QuickEdit Mode is like having Mark enabled all the time, so selecting text to copy is really easy.

As a bonus, this also enables a simple way to paste into the Command Prompt: just right click once and whatever you have in the clipboard is pasted in the Command Prompt window. Normally, pasting involves right-clicking and selecting Paste , so this is still a bit different than you're used to.

Just open Command Prompt and execute this:. The movie will start immediately. Check out the tip below if this doesn't work. True, this isn't a terribly productive use of the Command Prompt, nor is it really a trick of the Command Prompt or any command, but it sure is fun!

We can't imagine the work that went into this homage to the sci-fi masterpiece. The Telnet command isn't enabled by default, so if you want to use the Telnet client in Windows you need to enable it from Control Panel..

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By Tim Fisher. Tim Fisher. Now, just let your friends relax and enjoy the benefits of a free Internet connection, all thanks to you. Have you ever thought about watching Star Wars at the command prompt? This method uses Telnet, so you should make sure Telnet is enabled on your Windows. Were you able to take advantage of our list with some command prompt tricks? So leave a comment saying what you think and if you have any questions. Reviews Tutorials News.

Tutorial Windows PC. The best 15 command prompt tricks for Windows! Index of this article. By Equipe Apptuts. Cancel reply. Latest tutorials The 7 best text-to-speech Chrome extensions! How to install and use Grammarly in Google Docs. How to sync computer folders with Google Drive! How to transfer stickers from Telegram to WhatsApp.