Command Line Interfaces

Windows 11 provides a rich graphical user interface (GUI), but it also supports various command line interfaces (CLIs) through a modern Terminal app. Some of these CLIs come with Windows 11 and some are enabled by default, while others can be installed later.

Defaults
The CLI features in Windows 11 are aimed at system administrators, developers, and other power users, and so the default configuration is minimalist.

Windows 11 includes a rich and modern Terminal app that acts as the host for any number of CLIs.
Windows 11 still supports the legacy Windows Console Host for backward compatibility reasons, and it decides which host to use by default.
Windows 11 includes Command Prompt and Windows PowerShell CLIs that can be accessed via Terminal or as standalone apps that use the old Windows Console Host.
Windows PowerShell is the default CLI in Terminal.
Windows 11 includes the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which supports multiple GNU/Linux environments with both CLI and graphical Linux apps. This feature is not enabled by default.
Windows 11 now includes a sudo command line app, new to 2026, that is not enabled by default but works similarly to the Unix utility of the same name and lets you elevate individual CLI commands with administrator privileges.

Customize
Windows 11 provides a handful of CLI settings in the Settings app, in System > Advanced, under the "Terminal" section. None are critical for casual users.

They are:

Terminal. Instead of letting Windows 11 decide which terminal host to use, as it does by default, you can configure this setting to "Windows Terminal," which I recommend, or "Windows Console Host."

PowerShell. This item expands to reveal a single setting, "Change execution policy to allow local PowerShell scripts to run without signing," that's tied to security and should not be enabled.

Enable sudo. If you're a power user with a Unix background, you may want to enable sudo. Otherwise, leave this disabled.

In this chapter, I will focus almost exclusively on Terminal and CLIs running within it, and that app has an astonishing range of settings and customization capabilities, some of which are described later in the chapter. Additionally, you can also add external CLIs to Terminal to Windows via standalone downloads or other apps. Two notable examples include:

PowerShell. This is the modern successor to Windows PowerShell that's built on the latest .NET stack and works in Linux and macOS in addition to Windows. It's available as a standalone download and runs alongside Windows PowerShell rather than replacing it.

Visual Studio 2026. The lates version of Visual Studio ships with multiple CLIs that are installed along with this integrated development environment (IDE) and enabled depending on which workloads you configure.
Terminal
The Terminal app is the default command-line host in Windows 11. Command line interfaces (CLIs)--sometimes called command-line apps or...