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Is there any way to add left padding for windows cmd (Windows 10)? The output comes right after the windows border and sometimes it is hard to see the output clearly.

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  • A program could manually do padding (print a space before each line, for example) but I don't know of any way in conhost.exe (the terminal emulator program that hosts all command-line programs, of which cmd.exe is merely one such). – CBHacking Feb 13 '17 at 5:51
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    No answer here to your question, but some workarounds: Option 1) Place the CMD window on top of a MS Paint window with a black background. You still get the border, but the overall color contrast may be easier on the eyes. Option number 2) Press Alt-Space. Choose Properties. Look for options to change the font. (See if you can adjust the font, the font size, and any option about making a font bold.) Those are the easy options. Option 3) Try other software, like PuTTY and/or SyncTerm, along with a server (running locally, listening on localhost's address(es)) – TOOGAM Feb 13 '17 at 7:56
  • It would be easier to read if you change your colour scheme ... – DavidPostill♦ Feb 13 '17 at 13:49
  • Thanks, I have changed the color and font, but I would have been great if windows have an option for this in the cmd properties. Conemu is great and i use it now, but sadly it is not supported by the IDE geany that generates cmd output. – srisar Feb 14 '17 at 3:38
  • If you still haven't found any solution, use windows terminal application. In that, by default you have some left padding and it looks neat. – RaJ May 18 '20 at 7:11
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I don't know if this particularly warrants an answer, this might get relegated to a comment, but for me I think @RaJ's comment on the original post is a good one. I had no idea this application existed, but Windows now has a program called "Terminal". Not cmd.exe or conhost.exe, but a separate application...I find it quite good. It houses command-line programs, has a few different abilities included tabbed sessions, and..... (drum-roll) for me it solves this "text squished up against the left edge" issue, as there seems to be a slight left-edge buffer for any and all (so far as I've used it) console output.

Example...

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If you kinda look at it, you can see that where I did > echo hello in both the standard cmd.exe (foreground) and the Terminal application, "hello" in cmd is smushed right up against the edge...(hence why some of the previous output in the program I was working on has 1 space right before each line)...but in Terminal there's a bit of a gap between "hello" and the left edge. In fact, there's a small gap even between the prompt and the edge. (Presumably/hopefully, all output and the edge.)

This Terminal application may be what I start using.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-terminal/9n0dx20hk701

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I believe you can do even more than that! since I cannot test it now..

Profile settings in Windows Terminal

Try to read this info text settings>Padding and set the profile for Windows Terminal.

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