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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?

5 Answers 5

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

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

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  • 4
    +1 You wrote almost exactly the same as me so I just added my pictures to your answer instead.
    – Nifle
    Oct 15, 2010 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, 2010 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, 2010 at 2:47
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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
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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! Apr 9, 2013 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. Nov 15, 2014 at 1:01
  • Great, this works for me. Feb 20, 2016 at 4:58
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Go to a command prompt and type help color then press ENTER.

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

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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.
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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

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