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Unparalleled Power for Your Windows Command Prompts

For more than 30 years, JP Software has been helping programmers, system administrators, and advanced users save time and solve their command prompt frustrations. Take Command offers a new approach to working with Windows console applications, bringing users the power of the command line and the ease of use of the GUI.

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A video introduction to Take Command

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Take Command Reviews

PC World

Take Command takes a powerful yet simple command processor and marries it with a beautifully modern interface, for a result that leaves the default Windows interface years behind.

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CNET

Take Command performed well in our tests. It responded quickly to our input, and we liked the flexibility of its interface--floating or docking its panes as separate consoles. 

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SoftPedia

In the end, Take Command is just a better way of working with command line applications and scripts. The explorer like environment, together with the vast set of supported commands are must-try benefits, especially for developers.

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The Best Windows Command Line Tools

Take Command is compatible with your existing Windows command prompt commands and CMD batch files, while adding thousands of new features. (And Take Command runs your batch files faster than CMD!)

12 Reasons to Replace the CMD Command Prompt

The default Windows command processor is CMD.EXE. It is a console application that executes the commands you enter at the prompt and runs simple batch scripts (files with a .BAT or .CMD extension). Unfortunately, the CMD shell has always been woefully lacking in even the most basic features compared to the command processors available in other operating systems. And CMD hasn’t changed significantly since its first appearance in Windows NT 3.1 (released in 1993).

So What’s Wrong With CMD?

  • CMD in Windows 10 has about 40 internal commands. That’s only a couple more than CMD had in Windows NT 3.1 30 years ago. Take Command has more than 265 internal commands, and has major enhancements for CMD commands like COPY, DEL, MOVE, and RENAME. And with Take Command's command dialogs, it's easier to use than CMD!
  • CMD has (almost) no configuration options. There are a handful of switches you can specify on the startup line, and that’s it. Take Command has hundreds of configuration options that are easily set with the OPTION dialog.
  • There’s no way to create plugins to extend CMD; your only choice is writing new external apps. Take Command has a plugin SDK for writing your own plugins, and you can download dozens of third-party plugins.
  • CMD can set its foreground and background colors, and … nothing else. Take Command adds configurable syntax coloring, different colors for input, output, and errors, and colorized directories.
  • Command line editing in CMD is (extremely) simplistic. Take Command features the best command line editor of any command shell.
  • Filename completion is crude and non-programmable. Take Command includes (optionally programmable) popup file completion, and adds command, directory, alias, and variable completion.
  • Variables in CMD consist of the environment variables and a total of 6 internal variables. All of those internal CMD and Windows settings you’d like to query? Not from CMD. Take Command adds more than 780 internal variables and variable functions.
  • File viewing is limited to TYPE. If you want to display a page at a time, pipe to MORE. Want to go back a page, search, scroll up and down? You can’t. Take Command includes The V File Viewer, the premium Windows text and binary file viewer.
  • Aliases? Sort of. Just don’t try anything other than the most basic command alias. Take Command has command aliases, directory aliases, keystroke aliases, shared aliases, and more.
  • 30+ years into the Internet era, and CMD’s Internet-capable commands consist of … nothing. No HTTPS or FTP(S) file access for internal commands. No SSL or SSH, and no SMTP. Take Command supports all those, and more.
  • Help is nearly non-existent. There is a paragraph or two of text output when you enter the command name followed by a /?. Want to see the command syntax while you’re constructing a command line or writing a batch file? Help on redirection, command line parsing, regular expressions, or batch file creation? Forget it. Take Command has an extensive interactive help system, available anytime at the press of a key.
  • Creating, editing, and debugging batch files is a demanding task and needs an integrated solution. What is Microsoft’s solution? Edit the batch file in Notepad, run it on the command line, and see what happens. Take Command has an easy to use and extremely powerful IDE for creating, editing, and debugging your batch scripts.

Take Command is our flagship product. Take Command is a complete and upwardly compatible Windows console replacement that solves all of the problems above, and provides you with thousands of additional features not available at the CMD prompt. Learn more about Take Command.

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