A terminal emulator is an interface with which you get access to the command line of your computer. Using the terminal, we can accomplish and automate tasks on a computer without the use of a graphical user interface. Further, it allows us to send simple text commands to our computer to do things like navigate through a directory or copy a file and form the basis for many more complex automation and programming skills. You can also access the remote computers from the host computer and share files between them. The terminal is also often referred to as a console. On Windows PCs, you can find the in-built console called command prompt. Other than this, there are a lot of terminals available for Windows. Get into this article to know the 15 best terminal emulators for Windows.
15 best terminal emulators for Windows are as follows.
- Cmder
- Terminus
- Fluent Terminal
- FireCMD
- MobaXterm
- ZOC Terminal
- Windows Terminal
- ConEmu
- PuTTY
- Babun
- MinTTY
- Hyper
- KiTTY
- Git Bash Terminal
- Xshell Terminal Emulator
15 Best Terminal Emulators for Windows
#1. Cmder
Cmder is one of the best terminal emulators for Windows PC. It is developed based on an amazing ConEmu console emulator. Monokai color scheme is embedded in this emulator. It makes the look more attractive yet fancy. Further, it also gives you the possibility to customize the color and scheme’s transparency. It coordinates with certain command lines applications like Powershell, CMD, and MinTTY. The one reason which makes the Cmder the best terminal is the portable version of the software. And you can use USB or cloud storage to store the software. Additionally, it even works well with VS code terminal. Cmder is highly flexible and comes with an in-built Quake-style drop-down mode.
#2. Terminus
Terminus is a modern and highly configurable terminal app for Windows. It is a complete command-line solution that redefines remote access for system admins and network engineers. Terminus is open-source software that helps the community to move software forward and to make it even better. Further, you can use customized options on Terminus like color, theme, size, window frame behavior, tab location, cursor style, hotkeys, etc. It has an excellent interface and integrates with git-bash with a simple toggle in the interface. Furthermore, it is a cross-platform software, and it helps to transfer or download files over SFTP. You can also add multiple remote servers.
#3. Fluent Terminal
Fluent Terminal is one of the best terminal emulators for Windows PC based on UWP. It looks and feels very native on Windows. It supports ALT-ENTER full screen and tabs for as many consoles as you like. Further, Fluent Terminal has a nice themes setup, and it includes a half-dozen to start, plus supports imports. You should definitely try Fluent Terminal on your Windows. It is a terminal for PowerShell, CMD, and WSL. Furthermore, it supports Microsoft Fluent Design’s Acrylic effect for a blurred-behind effect on Windows. It works fast, and overall, it is a great customized terminal for Windows.
#4. FireCMD
FireCMD is another best terminal emulators for Windows with enhanced features and functions. The interface of the software is user-friendly, which provides an ultimate experience with the computer. The one main feature of this terminal is, it has support for automatic command completion. That is, you have to type a small word, and it will show you the suggestions. Furthermore, it has support for HTML and CSS programming languages. It is available for free as well as in the premium version. FireCMD is very flexible and allows users to create up to 500 aliases. Moreover, it also remembers the command history and the last working directory for the next session. It allows you to run multiple command shells and console applications simultaneously in tabbed windows.
#5. MobaXTerm
MobaXTerm can be your ultimate toolbox for remote computing. The terminal provides loads of functions that are tailored for programmers, webmasters, and IT administrators. Here, you can create a session, and it can be accessed anytime, even after we get the network interrupts. The user interface of the terminal is very simple and easy to access. Further, it also provides security as well. You can edit remote files through SSH and SFTP. With MobaXTerm, there is no fiddling with multiple apps, you can simply connect, and everything is available. It integrates perfectly with the Windows subsystem, and out of the box, it offers a shell to that system. The terminal also supports macro controls, and you can install conda for additional package management.
#6. ZOC Terminal
ZOC is a powerful terminal emulator and telnet client. It is known for its outstanding user interface with tabbed multi-session support. ZOC allows you to access character-based hosts using Secure Shell, telnet, modem, ISDN, and most other means of communication. It is available for Windows and macOS. ZOC functions like an actual terminal emulator and not just a local console Window app. It has a modern design and provides complete automation of the client using its macro scripting. Further, it offers a thumbnail view of all sessions in thumbnails and types commands to all sessions at the same time. It allows every UI component except the title bar to be hidden. With the context menu, you will find all the features. It will search for the text bits in the data stream and highlights them with color/background.
#7. Windows Terminal
The Windows terminal is a modern, fast, efficient, powerful, and productive terminal application. It combines many command-line tools and hells such as Command Prompt, PowerShell, and WSL. The features of the Windows terminal include multiple tabs where different command-line tools live, split areas, GPU accelerated text rendering engine, and an easy way to change between themes and configuration options. You can configure your Windows terminal to have a variety of color themes and settings. There are a variety of custom commands you can use in the Windows terminal to have it feel more natural to you. Further, it can display Unicode and UTF-8 characters such as emoji and characters from a variety of languages. Finally, you can set the terminal to launch in a specific configuration using command line arguments.
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#8. ConEmu
ConEmu is designed for those who use the command line often. The emulator comes with tabs that present multiple consoles and simple GUI applications as one customizable GUI window with various features. One of the best features of ConEmu is Bar integration. It allows running CMD, PowerShell, Cygwin, PuTTY, TCC/LE, etc. Additionally, it even integrates well with Explorer. Further, it permits the user to check up on the progress of an operation with a quick glance at the taskbar without reading to bring the app to the foreground. Moreover, you can change the width and height of the console window without having to reset your session. You can even set up ConEmu as a transparent, Quake-style console. And it is zero-config gets you all your installed shells.
#9. PuTTY
PuTTY is a free and open-source terminal emulator available for Windows. It supports many variations on the secure remote terminal and provides user control over the SSH encryption key. PuTTY connects to hosts via secure shell, telnet, or RS232. It gives full source so you can compile and modify it yourself. With this tool, there remains no need for unencrypted remote connection opportunities. And it doesn’t require many resources. It comes with a GUI, and it is an extremely reliable application. You can choose between the wide variety of protocols that it supports and the option for connections. Though it is an old application, it earned the trust of several users over a long period by being reliable and offering lots of useful features.
#10. Babun
Babun is another best terminal for Windows. It comes with both bash and zsh out of the box. Babun is best for both beginners and advanced users. Further, it comes with a package manager called Pact, which is an extremely simple yet powerful package manager. It is built on the top of Cygwin, meaning that Unix or Linux apps can be compiled and run on a Windows OS from within the Linux-like interface. It has a silent command-line installer, with no admin rights you can access. Furthermore, it offers features like plugin-oriented architecture, auto-update feature, pre-configured Cygwin with many addons, xTerm-256 compatible console, pre-configured git and shell, and many more features.
#11. MinTTY
MinTTY is a free and open-source terminal emulator for Windows. It works for Cygwin, the Unix-like environment for Windows. It offers lots of features such as full-screen display, drag and drop, copy and paste, changing background colors, font, transparency, and a lot more features. And the mouse wheel in MinTTY actually scrolls the content in man/less/vim, etc. It is a standard terminal emulator for the Windows System. The UTF-8 allows for the encoding of all possible characters and works along with XTerm. And the user interface is simple and intuitive to use. MinTTY even provides support for character attributes and offers bidirectional rendering and adaptable controls for bidi.
#12. Hyper
Hyper is a cross-platform terminal emulator based on electrons. It supports split panels and plugins. Hyper is designed to connect to other computers remotely to provide diagnostic tools to the local computer system. Further, it allows you to modify the commands and change them and even edit as well. It gives hot-load and hot-reload plugins to use. Hyper also supports split panes, and you can use multi-tabs features. The users can also use Hyper terminal to troubleshoot any issues when settings up and use a modem. The common function is to connect the remote computers, including Telnet sites, online bulletin board services, file transfer protocol sites, online services, and other computers.
#13. KiTTY
KiTTY is a fast, featureful, GPU-based terminal emulator. It uses threaded rendering to minimize input latency. It works exactly like PuTTY but adds a lot of extra features. KiTTY offers features like session launcher, session filter, automatic logon script, send to tray, transparency, URL hyperlinks, new command-line options, and many more. The source code is available, and you can modify or review changes. Further, you can also store passwords and passphrases locally. KiTTY processes the commands automatically after the connection is made. Furthermore, it has the ability to overlay the terminal background with an image. Finally, it uses Unicode for the best character compatibility.
#14. Git Bash Terminal
Git Bash is a set of command-line utility programs designed to execute on a Windows environment. It lets users type Git commands for easier source code management through versioning and commit history. If you use CLI, you will be given access to every single git function available, thus providing complete flexibility in managing git. It even includes a command-line graphical interface in the form of Git GUI, Git BASH, and a context menu interface. With Git Bash, it is possible to generate an RSA key pair using Git BASH. You can learn how it functions and how best to get the desired result.
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#15. Xshell Terminal Emulator
Xshell is one of the powerful terminal emulators available for Windows. It supports RLOGIN, SFTP, SERIAL, TELNET, SSH2 and SSH1. It offers a combination of benefits and features unavailable with other leading SSH clients like Anydesk or TeamViewer. Xshell comes with several drop-down tabs so, you can easily click on one or more tabs to open separate windows. Further, with this terminal, you can control multiple computers simultaneously. When using Xshell, you don’t have to be concerned about any information getting compromised. Moreover, it provides a live update feature that automatically downloads and upgrades on the network.
Summary
These are the top 15 best terminals for Windows. All of them are best in one way or another. You can go through the article completely to find out the best terminal for your Windows. Because it depends on your requirements. Share with us your thoughts about this article in the comments.