Version 36.52
Take Command:
Take Command can record ConPTY terminal sessions in the asciicast v2 format. A recording is a UTF-8 .cast file that stores the terminal size, timestamps, and every terminal input and output event, so the session can be replayed later exactly as it happened. A recording captures timestamped events from the active ConPTY session, including:
•Terminal output, including ANSI/VT escape sequences.
•Keyboard input and special-key escape sequences.
•Unicode text and bracketed-paste input.
•Text inserted by drag and drop, folder insertion, and filename insertion.
You can play back .cast recordings in Take Command - they are opened in read-only tab windows, and a control bar is displayed in the window that allows you to run, pause, jump back or forward 10 seconds, or rewind to the beginning.
See Terminal Recording for details.
More shell integration features:
•TCExplorer can display a Windows desktop toast notification when a shell command sends an OSC 9 or OSC 777 notification escape sequence to a ConPTY terminal tab. This lets long-running commands (builds, downloads, backups, and similar tasks) alert you when they finish, even if the tab isn't currently in the foreground.
•Clickable command blocks are now detected in the scrollback buffer, using OSC 133/633 shell-integration marks.
•The tab window context menu has additional actions when the right mouse button is clicked is within a command block - Copy Command, Copy Output, and Rerun Command.
oCopy Command copies the command to the clipboard.
oCopy Output copies the output of the command to the clipboard.
oRerun Command runs the command again.
The scrollback buffer search has a new "search bar" dialog.
•Incremental searching - automatically highlights matches on each new keystroke.
•Per-match highlighting, active-match highlighting, match count, and automatic viewport navigation.
•Previous/next navigation through the search bar up / down buttons, Enter/Shift+Enter, and F3/Shift+F3.
•Match Case and Regex modes using the existing regular-expression engine.
•Automatic search re-indexing after terminal output, view-size changes, and alternate-buffer transitions.
•Supports light and dark themes.
•There is a Cmd toggle on the search bar. In Cmd mode, search:
•Searches output inside each command block.
•Groups multiple matching output rows into one command result.
•Previous/Next navigates between matching command blocks rather than individual rows.
•Navigating to a folded command block automatically expands it and positions its header in the viewport.
Added support for iTerm2 and SIXEL images. (Also see the new TCC command IMGTTY below.)
Added support for more ANSI sequences:
Synchronized output (?2026) now suppresses UI updates while enabled. Terminal state continues updating; on ?2026l, the pending complete terminal region is displayed.
OSC 633 command metadata.
OSC 1337 iTerm2 inline-image decoding and rendering, disabled by default and enabled with TabPtyITermImages=Yes.
Richer mouse support:
1000, 1002, 1003: application tracking now activates Take Command mouse forwarding
1005: UTF-8 extended X10 encoding
1006: SGR cell-coordinate encoding
1015: URXVT encoding
1016: SGR pixel-coordinate output
1007: alternate-screen wheel-to-arrow behavior
TCC:
TCC will send the Base64 encoded text of the command line to Take Command (OSC 633 command metadata) before executing the command.
New TCMD.INI Directives:
TabPtyItermImages=yes | NO - If YES, enables displaying iTerm2 inline image files (see also IMGTTY).
TabPtyOSC52=yes | NO - If YES, enables OSC 52 clipboard writes and clipboard query responses.
TabPtyRecord=yes | NO - Records everything in ConPTY tab windows to asciicast v2 files. (This will significantly slow down your system, and is only recommended for debugging sessions or creating demonstrations to play back later.)
TabPtyRecordDirectory=pathname - The directory to use when creating asciicast recordings (the default is the temp directory).
TabPtySIXELImages=yes | NO - If YES, enables displaying SIXEL inline image files (see also IMGTTY).
TabPtySixelMaxBytes=n - The maximum size of a SIXEL image (default is 64Mb).
New Commands:
IMGTTY writes a terminal image sequence to standard output. Use it in a terminal that supports the selected image protocol. Take Command supports both SIXEL and iTerm2 images.
The syntax is:
IMGTTY [/I | /S] image ...
/I (iTerm2 image)
/S (SIXEL image)
image (image filename)
Because (at the time of this writing) ConHost does not support the SIXEL ANSI sequence, if TCC is running In a Take Command ConPTY tab, IMGTTY uses a TCExplorer-compatible transport for SIXEL images so that Take Command can display them. The emitted sequence is intended for terminal display; redirecting it writes Base64-encoded terminal control data rather than a conventional image file.
IMGTTY uses the Windows Imaging Component and supports image formats installed with Windows, including PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, and WebP. IMGTTY is not supported in TCC-RT.
To display iTerm2 images, the TabPtyITermImages directive in the [TakeCommand] section TCMD.INI must be set to YES. To display SIXEL images, the TabPtySIXELImages directive in the [TakeCommand] section TCMD.INI must be set to YES.
Version 36.50 and 36.51
Take Command:
Take Command 36.50 uses DirectWrite / Direct2D instead of GDI to display text in ConPTY tabs. This provides sharper and smoother text (including sub-pixel ClearType anti-aliasing), which is especially noticeable on high-DPI displays. Display output is 20-30% faster (using GPU acceleration), it scales better across different resolutions and DPI levels, and it supports OpenType features such as ligatures and swashes. DirectWrite also has better Unicode support for multilingual text, emojis, and surrogate pairs.
Take Command is now per-monitor DPI aware. Take Command will automatically adjust its fonts, toolbars, menus, and dialogs when moving between monitors with different DPI settings.
Take Command now can display either a ribbon menu (as in 36.0) or a Visual Studio-style menu on the caption bar with drop down menus. This option will save a little space, and make for a cleaner look. (And some people are not fans of the ribbon menus!) You can toggle this option in the Take Command configuration dialog ("Options / Take Command / Advanced"). See the VSMenu option in "New TCMD.INI Directives" below. If you choose the Visual Studio-style menu, you get access to 17 additional themes.
Take Command now supports Shell Integration. TCC 36.50 supports shell integration natively; PowerShell, CMD, bash, fish etc. will require some modifications to the prompt or internal settings (and may not support all shell integration features).
When starting a Take Command tab window, you will see a gutter on the left margin. The left gutter shows the "folding" triangles. A downward triangle will be displayed to the left of a command input line if that command produced output. You can click on the triangle to collapse (hide) the output and change to a right pointing triangle. Clicking on the triangle again will show the command output again. You can toggle all of the folds on and off with the "Toggle All Folds" option in the Tabs menu.
Each command input prompt will write a "tick" mark into the vertical scrollbar on the right side of the window. If you are using TCC in the tab window, when you run a command the prompt tick mark displayed for the next prompt will be green (if the command returned 0), red (if the command returned > 0), or gray (if nothing was returned). The colors can be modified with TCMD.INI directives if desired (see below). Using Shell Integration, you can move to the previous commands with the Ctrl-Up key; Ctrl-Down will take you back through the more recent commands. The currently selected command will have a highlight box drawn around its tick on the scrollbar. If you press Ctrl-G, Take Command will select all of the text output for that command; you can then copy it to the clipboard as though you had marked it with the mouse. If you are on the current input line, Ctrl-G will mark the output of the previous command.
Take Command now supports Profiles. You can create profiles for console apps (like TCC, PowerShell, CMD, and bash) and customize all of the tab settings. You can then execute a profile by selecting it from the Profiles menu in Take Command, or with the START /Profile=name option in a TCC tab window. Profiles can be created / modified / deleted in the Take Command configuration dialog, on the Profiles page. The "Detect Installed Shells..." button on the Profiles page will search your system for CMD, PowerShell, PowerShell Core, WSL, and Git shells and create profiles for them.
Searching the Take Command tab windows (ConPTY sessions only) will highlight all matches (instead of only the first match like v36.0 and earlier). The highlights are cleared when the Find dialog closes, or the ConPTY screen is cleared.
Take Command now supports background images in ConPTY tab windows. You can set the image in the Take Command configuration dialog on the Tabs page. The options are:
Opacity (0 - 100%)
Stretch mode:
•"stretch" → exactly rcPaint
•"uniform" → scale to fit, centered (letterbox)
•"uniformToFill" → scale to fill, centered (crop)
•"none" / default → centered at natural size
Take Command now supports Windows Terminal named color schemes (for example, Campbell, One Half Dark, Solarized, etc.). You can choose the color scheme in the Take Command Configuration / Tabs /
The new View / Focus Mode menu entry toggles "Focus Mode" on and off. Focus Mode will hide all of the non-essential windows in Take Command, including the tabbed toolbar, the client tabs, the status bar, the command prompt pane, and the File Explorer pane.
You can tell a splitter pane to fill the entire tab window with Ctrl+Shift+Z, or use the ribbon / menu View / Zoom Pane option. Toggle it again to restore the split pane.
Ctrl+Shift+P opens a fuzzy-searchable, keyboard-driven dialog of every menu entry. Take Command will execute the selected menu entry on an Enter.
Dragging the edges of the Take Command window will now snap to the next / previous row or column.
The internal ANSI escape sequences interpreter for pseudoconsoles now also supports bold, double underline, overline, subscript, and superscript characters.
Added DCS P…ST SIXEL escape sequences as inline raster images inside the tab window cell grid.
Added OSC 9;4 progress indicator.
Added OSC 8 clickable hyperlinks. See also TabPtyAutoURL below.
Added OSC 4 / 10 / 11 /12 (color query / set)
Added ANSI bracketed paste.
TCC:
The Plugin Manager (OPTION / Plugins tab) connects you to a repository of third-party TCC plugins. You can browse the available plugins, and install / update / remove them.
Everything Search has been updated to 1.5.1416b.
Libcurl has been updated to 8.20.
IDE / Batch Debugger:
The IDE / Batch Debugger now support Notepad++ plugins. The Plugin Manager (Plugins in the main menu) connects you to a repository of third-party plugins. You can browse the available plugins, and install / update / remove them.
The IDE / Batch Debugger now supports horizontal or vertical tab groups (like Take CommandI). The tab group options are on the Windows menu, and on the tab context menu (right click on a tab).
You can detach / float / dock the toolbar.
The Scintilla editor has been updated to version 5.6.3.
The Lexilla lexer has been updated to version 5.5.0.
TCEDIT:
TCEdit now supports Notepad++ plugins. The Plugin Manager (Plugins in the main menu) connects you to a repository of third-party plugins. You can browse the available plugins, and install / update / remove them.
TCEdit now supports horizontal or vertical tab groups (like Take CommandI). The tab group options are on the Windows menu, and on the tab context menu (right click on a tab).
You can detach / float / dock the toolbar.
The Scintilla editor has been updated to version 5.6.3
The Lexilla lexer has been updated to version 5.5.0.
PLUGINS:
See the Plugin Manager under TCC (above).
New TCMD.INI Directives:
PasteMultiLineConfirm=yes | NO - If set to YES, when text containing newlines is pasted, a dialog asks "This will run N commands — continue?" to prevent accidentally executing a multi-line script.
SIFolding=YES | no = If YES, and Shell Integration is enabled, display a gutter at the left margin that shows folding / unfolding triangles to hide or display output from the marked command input line.
SIPromptMarks=YES | no - If Yes, each command input prompt will write a "tick" mark on the vertical scrollbar. The scrollbar will show whether the command succeeded (return code 0) by coloring the mark green. If the return code != 0 the mark will be red. Colors are configurable; see below.
SICwdSync=YES|no - If YES, Take Command will enable the OSC 133 ANSI sequence to set its default directory to that of the shell.
SISuccessColor=rgb - Sets the color for the mark on the vertical scrollbar for command output when the command returned a result of 0. Default color is green.
SIErrorColor=rgb - Sets the color for the mark on the vertical scrollbar for command output when the command returned a result of 0. Default color is red.
SIUnknownColor=rgb - Sets the color for the fill in the gutter for command output when the command did not return a result. Default color is gray.
TabPtyAutoURL=yes|NO - If YES, Take Command will underline URLs in the buffer output and make them clickable, without requiring an OSC 8 sequence from the console app.
TabPtyBell=none | AUDIBLE | visual | both - On an ASCII BEL (0x07), either beep, put an amber mark on the tab to signal a pending BEL, do both, or do nothing.
TabPtyTextOpacity=0-100 (default 95) - The text opacity DirectWrite should use for default text output. Higher values will appear bolder and brighter.
TrimCopyWhitespace=yes | NO - If YES, strips trailing space from each copied line before copying it to the clipboard.
TrimPasteWhitespace=yes | NO - If YES, strips trailing spaces from each pasted line — useful when copying from blocks that include padding.
VSMenu=yes|NO - If YES, Take Command will use a Visual Studio-style menu on the caption bar, instead of the ribbon menu.
Updated Commands:
Added support for > 4Gb files.
FSEARCH is significantly faster, particularly with large files.
Added support for NTFS file streams.
Added support for > 4Gb files.
SREPLACE is significantly faster, particularly with large files.
/Profile=name - Asks Take Command to open the app defined in the profile in a new tab.
/TABPTY - Starts a new tab in Take Command in a ConPTY session.
/TABPTYNA - Starts a new tab in Take Command in a ConPTY session, but doesn't switch to the new tab.
/TABTINT=rrggbb - Draws a 3 DPI-scaled pixel stripe along the edge of that tab in the tint color (hex RGB, e.g. FF0000 = red). Clear the tint with /TABTINT=0. Only meaningful inside a Take Command tab window. This option is useful for signaling the state of activity in the tab, or for designating the type of process in the tab.
If you specify an editor in "OPTION / Windows / Editor", XDIR will use that app instead of TCEdit when you select a file to edit (default Ctrl-E).
XHISTORY first looks for its data file in ProgramData (usually c:\programdata\JP Software). If the data file isn't found (some Windows configurations block write access to ProgramData), XHISTORY will look in LocalAppData (usually "c:\users\username\AppData\Local\JP Software").
Version 36.0
Take Command:
Many performance and security optimizations.
The Take Command installer and updater are new and built with different tools than previous versions.
Take Command is using a new version of the GUI framework.
Take Command now supports Windows 10 / 11 pseudoconsoles (also known as ConPTY). You can create tabs that use hidden consoles (i.e., v35 and earlier) as well as the v36 pseudoconsoles in the same Take Command session.
The Take Command pseudoconsoles support 16-million color foreground & background colors, as well as XTerm 256-color and the v35 16 colors.
The Take Command v36 internal ANSI escape sequences interpreter for pseudoconsoles supports italic, underline, and strikethrough text.
Take Command now supports both normal and elevated tab windows in the same (unelevated) Take Command session. You can start an elevated tab either as a startup tab, by right clicking on the tab bar and selecting "Run...", or selecting the Tabs menu and clicking on "Run...".
Added an option in the Home menu to save the console buffer as a PDF.
The regular expression syntax analyzer (Tools / Regex) has some new features: it will show the match, the match position, and the capture group(s).
TCC:
Many performance and security optimizations.
Everything Search has been updated to 1.5.1407.
Lua has been updated to 5.5.
Curl has been updated to 8.18.
Added Python 3.15 support.
Added pre-BTM and post-BTM aliases (or plugin commands). They work like PRE_EXEC and POST_EXEC.
PRE_BTM - Executed before running a .BTM batch file. It will also be run when chaining from one .BTM file to another, but *not* when CALL'ing another .BTM.
POST_BTM - Executed after finishing a .BTM batch file.
Extended the Powershell support. In addition to calling Powershell from TCC, you can now also call TCC from Powershell. See PSHELL for more details.
The regular expression syntax analyzer (Ctrl-F7) has some new features: it will show the match, the match position, and the capture group(s).
IDE / Batch Debugger:
Many performance and security optimizations.
The IDE is using a new version of the GUI framework.
The Scintilla editor has been updated to version 5.6.1.
The Lexilla lexer has been updated to version 5.4.8.
TCEDIT:
TCEdit is using a new version of the GUI framework.
The Scintilla editor has been updated to version 5.6.1.
Help:
The help viewer (eViewer.exe) has been updated to version 5.6.
PLUGINS:
Added support for .NET plugins.
Added support for PRE_BTM and POST_BTM plugin commands. Like PRE_EXEC and POST_EXEC, but executed before and after running .BTM batch files.
New TCMD.INI Directives:
ClaudeKey=xxxxx - Your Claude API key.
GeminiKey=xxxxx - Your Gemini API key.
SystemCaret=yes|NO - Take Command pseudoconsole (ConPTY) tab windows will draw their own cursor, so they can support cursor colors. Set SystemCaret=YES if you want to use the default Windows caret (sometimes necessary for screen readers).
New Internal Variables:
_CONPTY - returns 1 if TCC is running in a pseudoconsole (ConPTY)
Updated Variable Functions:
@DRIVETYPEEX - added new return types: 9 for a VHD / VHDX (virtual hard disk), and 10 for an ISO (virtual optical disk)
@GETDATE - added optional title. @getdate[[date][,title]]
@GETDATETIME - added optional title. @getdate[[date time][,title]]
Updated Commands:
Now supports OpenAI models >= 5.x.
/Engine=xxx
The AI command now supports Gemini and Claude. To use Gemini, use /Engine=Gemini. To use Clause, /Engine=Claude. The default value for /Engine is OpenAI.
See the ClaudeKey and GeminiKey TCMD.INI directives above.
/M= - Now supports Claude models:
/M=Opus or /M="Opus 4" - Use the latest Opus 4 model
/M=Sonnet or /M="Sonnet 4" - Use the latest Sonnet 4 model
/M=Haiku or /M="Haiku 3.5" - Use the latest Haiku 3.5 model
Gemini supports the OpenAI APIs, so you can use the /L option in AI to list the available models.
Added the PRE_BTM and POST_BTM aliases (see above).
Added support for all of the COLOR color specifications.
/R - Do a reverse search from the end of the file. (Note: because regular expressions do not support reverse searching, what FSEARCH does with this option is retrieve all of the matches for a file and then display them in reverse order. So on large files you may see a brief pause before the results are displayed.)
KEYSTACK now supports sending keys as though they were entered on the numeric keypad. The numeric keypad key names are:
NUMPAD0
NUMPAD1
NUMPAD2
NUMPAD3
NUMPAD4
NUMPAD5
NUMPAD6
NUMPAD7
NUMPAD8
NUMPAD9
MULTIPLY
ADD
SEPARATOR
SUBTRACT
DECIMAL
DIVIDE
/Mms - Wait the specified number of milliseconds after sending each key before sending the next. /M affects everything until the next /M, or the end of the KEYSTACK arguments.
/N - Use the numeric keypad mode for the following keys. For example:
keystack /n "45" - "37"
PSHELL is no longer using the third-party Powershell support dll (NSILP_PowerShell.x64.dll, which is no longer supported by its developers). PSHELL now uses TC-PowerShellHost64.dll to run Powershell in the TCC process.
PSHELL now supports callbacks to TCC from Powershell. For example, you can run TCC commands, expand internal variables or functions, or evaluate TCC expressions. See the PSHELL help for more details.
Ctrl-W will display the currently selected file in VIEW.
/input - Now supports CLIPn: and TMPn: pseudo-devices.
/input - Now supports CLIPn: and TMPn: pseudo-devices.
/output - Now supports CLIPn: and TMPn: pseudo-devices.
/C - Display a cumulative timestamp (since the start of TS) in the format hh:mm:ss.ms
/I - Display an incremental timestamp (since the previous line) in the format hh:mm:ss.ms
/F - Display a footer with a timestamp and "---- End of Pipe ----" when the pipe is closed.
Now supports the CLIPn: and TMPn: pseudo-devices for the input file..
Now supports the CLIPn: and TMPn: pseudo-devices for the output file.
The K_CDEXIT key (default Shift-Enter) will change to the selected directory and exit XDIR.
You can change the current drive or directory by entering the new one in the directory edit control (upper right in the XDIR window). The name can include TCC extensions (for example, "..." to move up three subdirectory levels).
/H1 - Hide the "." (current directory) entry, but show the ".." (parent directory) entry.
The keystroke K_XHISTCWD (default Ctrl-W, configurable in OPTION / Keyboard) will exit XHISTORY and change to the directory
where the selected command was originally executed.
The keystroke K_XHISTDELETE (default Ctrl-D, configurable in OPTION / Keyboard) will delete the selected XHISTORY entry.
The keystroke K_XHISTEDIT (default Ctrl-E) will allow you to edit the selected XHISTORY command line.
The keystroke K_XHISTSEARCH (default Ctrl-S) will search for a matching history entry.
Selecting an entry and pressing Enter will execute the selected history entry. (Original behavior, but never explicitly documented.)
Selecting an entry and pressing Shift-Enter will execute the selected history entry in its original directory.
Selecting an entry and pressing Ctrl-Enter will copy the selected history command to the command line but not run it. This allows you to edit the command before executing it.
Now supports the CLIPn: and TMPn: pseudo-devices for the input file..
Now supports the CLIPn: and TMPn: pseudo-devices for the output file.
