That was a mistake.
Recently, while juggling the backend of AREA-6.CO.UK and my other websites, I started forcing myself to use Windows Terminal more often. It turns out that a handful of commands—some of which have been quietly sitting there since the Vista days—can completely replace workflows that usually take minutes of furious mouse-clicking.
If you aren’t familiar, Windows Terminal is a tabbed app pre-installed on Windows 11 (and free on the Windows 10 Microsoft Store) that hosts shells like PowerShell, Command Prompt, and WSL.
Here are five commands I genuinely wish I’d started using earlier.
1. winget upgrade --all (Ditch the Manual Update Shuffle)
Winget is a command-line tool for the Windows Package Manager service that lets you discover, install, upgrade, and configure applications. Instead of hunting down update executables across the web, you can let Winget do the heavy lifting.
Running winget upgrade --all tells Windows to find all your installed applications with available updates and install them in one fell swoop.
- Want a sneak peek? Just type
winget upgradeto list all packages with available updates without actually installing them. - Got pinned apps? The
--allflag safely ignores apps you’ve pinned to a specific version. If you want to force upgrade those too, just append--include-pinned.
Note: Winget manages your application packages, while standard Windows Update handles your OS patches and drivers. You really should be using both.
2. robocopy (The Ultimate File Copying Power Tool)
Robocopy (Robust File Copy) is Windows’ built-in heavyweight for moving, copying, and syncing massive sets of files. It’s been around since the NT 4.0 days and integrated into Windows since Vista, but it remains incredibly powerful.
Here is a typical backup command you might use:
robocopy "D:\Files" "E:\Backup" /E /Z
This copies everything from your D drive to your E drive. The magic is in the flags:
/E— Copies all subdirectories, even the empty ones./Z— Enables restartable mode. If your transfer drops, it picks right back up where it left off./MIR— Mirrors the source to the destination (warning: this will delete files at the destination if they no longer exist at the source)./L— A lifesaver flag. It performs a “dry run” so you can test your copy operation safely before committing./MT— Enables multithreaded copying (defaulting to 8 threads), making massive transfers significantly faster.
You can also append /LOG:[filename] to output a log file of exactly what the tool did, or /LOG+:[filename] to append to an existing log.
3. taskkill /IM [process] /F /T (When “End Task” Fails)
We’ve all been there: an app freezes, you open Task Manager, click “End Task,” and absolutely nothing happens. The terminal command taskkill is infinitely more reliable because it takes no prisoners.
Try running: taskkill /IM chrome.exe /F /T
/IM— Targets the process by its image name (like chrome.exe). Alternatively, use/PIDif you know the exact Process ID./F— Forces the termination. No asking nicely./T— Terminates the entire process tree, taking out any stubborn child processes the rogue app spawned.
It’s the perfect command for frozen apps or background processes quietly eating all your RAM and CPU.
4. wt Workspace Arguments (Stop Opening Tabs One at a Time)
You can launch a completely pre-configured workspace from a single command using wt (the command for Windows Terminal itself). By separating commands with a semicolon (;) and using sp (split-pane), you can build your perfect layout instantly.
Take this example straight from Microsoft:
wt -p "Windows PowerShell" ; sp -p "Command Prompt" ; new-tab -p "Ubuntu" ; sp -H -p "Ubuntu" ; focus-tab -t 0
- Use
-pto specify the profile (like PowerShell or Ubuntu). - Add
-d .or a specific path to start in a designated directory. - Use
--titleto name your tabs right out of the gate.
(Pro tip: If you’re running this from inside PowerShell, you might need to escape the semicolons using backticks, as PowerShell also uses semicolons as a separator.)
5. wt -w _quake (Quake Mode)
If you spent any time playing first-person shooters in the 1990s, you know exactly what this is. Quake mode, added in Terminal version 1.9, lets you drop down a terminal instance over whatever app you are currently using, spanning the top of your screen.
Just like hitting the tilde key in Quake to drop the console down for cheat codes, you can invoke this globally in Windows using Win + \``** (the grave accent key, usually sharing the tilde key). Alternatively, you can run **wt -w _quake` directly from the Run dialog (Win + R). It is a fantastic way to quickly fire off a command without losing your place in your current window.
