175

Is there any way of clearing the command prompt screen in windows using keyboard shortcuts?

1
  • 10
    If keyboard shortcuts are a must for some reason you can always cook up an AutoHotkey script that sends cls<Enter> to the open command prompt window.
    – Karan
    Apr 20, 2013 at 13:03

3 Answers 3

213

NO, But you can use CLS command to clear the whole screen, Esc (Escape) key will clear the input line. In addition, pressing Ctrl + C will move the cursor to a new blank line.

4
  • 4
    in powershell you can use also clear Dec 9, 2014 at 12:23
  • 1
    I think I understand why people like to alias clear in linux to cls for the consistency between systems!
    – Roy Ling
    Nov 4, 2015 at 5:40
  • Typing 'cls' + Enter (Return) is 4 keystrokes. That's pretty close to the 2 or probably 3 you'd need for a keyboard shortcut.
    – Dvaeer
    Apr 29, 2021 at 10:05
  • @Dvaeer with a keyboard shortcut I could e.g. clear the terminal without removing the command I was typing - please don't assume there's only the one use case you can come up with
    – mccc
    Oct 12, 2022 at 8:17
32

If you really really want to do that with a keyboard shortcut (myself included) you might turn to using autohotkey and write a little script like this:

; -------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Cntr-L should clear screen
; -------------------------------------------------------------------------
#IfWinActive ahk_class ConsoleWindowClass
^L::
Send cls{Enter}
return

#IfWinActive

what the script does ...

  • first look if one is within console application
  • if CTRL+L is pressed
  • write cls to the console and then hit ENTER
4
  • You might want to use SendInput Feb 19, 2016 at 11:57
  • 2
    Also #IfWinActive Command Prompt will prevent overriding shortcuts for other console applications like bash Feb 19, 2016 at 12:11
  • must say, this makes me smile every time I use it. TY @petermeissner
    – Mark Nadig
    Apr 22, 2016 at 15:58
  • 2
    Doing SendInput {Escape} before SendInput cls{Enter} makes sure the line gets cleared before adding the cls command.
    – Karlsson
    Jul 26, 2019 at 10:53
3

So long i also research but found best way to achieve this by defining Doskey Macro

i defined macro like this

doskey 1=cd\ $T cls

this will do two things by simple writing 1 and hit enter

  1. Bring you on clean Command route
  2. Clear entire screen

Note: you can add multiple desire command under one macro by separating them with $T

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