By default, Windows Terminal is opened with Windows PowerShell on your Windows 11 computer. However, you may want to always open Windows Terminal with Command Prompt on Windows 11. It is easy to do this. In this post, MiniTool Software will show you a full guide.
Windows Terminal Is Opened with Windows PowerShell by Default
Windows Terminal is a very powerful app on your Windows 11 computer. It allows you to open different types of command shells like Windows PowerShell, Command Prompt, and Azure Cloud Shell all in one place. It is very convenient to open Windows Terminal: you just need to right-click Start and select Windows Terminal or Windows Terminal (Admin).
Since there are three choices, there should be one default option. Yes, Windows Terminal is opened with Windows PowerShell by default. You may use Command Prompt frequently and you want to always open Windows Terminal with Command Prompt on Windows 11. It is possible to do this? Of course, yes. You can change the settings for Windows Terminal to do this. Here is a guide.
How to Make Windows Terminal Always Open with Command Prompt on Windows 11?
You can follow this guide to always open Windows Terminal with CMD:
1. Right-click Start and select Windows Terminal.
2. You see Windows Terminal starts into Windows PowerShell by default. Then, click the downward-facing caret next to the plus icon from the top tabs bar and select Settings from the drop-down menu.
3. You will see the Settings Stay at the Startup section. Then, expand the options for Default profile, and select Command prompt. On this page, you can also modify some other settings. For example, you can set Windows Terminal to launch on your computer startup. You can also change the launch mode, the new instance behavior, and the launch size.
4. Click the Save button to keep the changes.
Now, you can click the Plus button to open a new tab. If everything is OK, the new tab will be a Command Prompt interface.
You can also close all Windows Terminal tabs and re-open it to have a try. This time, you can open Windows Terminal with CMD by default.
What To DO if You Want to Open Windows Terminal with Another Command Shell?
Of course, you won’t keep using Command Prompt all the time. If you want to open Windows Terminal with Windows PowerShell occasionally, what should you do then?
It is also very easy to do this. After opening Windows Terminal, you can click the downward-facing caret next to the plus icon and then select Windows PowerShell. After that, you can see another tab is opened with Windows PowerShell.
Of course, you can also use Windows search to directly search for the command shell you want to open and directly open it. For example, if you want to open Windows PowerShell, you can search for powershell using Search and select the first result to open it. If you want to run it as administrator, you need to select Run as administrator.
Bottom Line
How to always open Windows Terminal with Command Prompt on your Windows 11 computer? After reading this post, you should know the answer. Should you have other related issues or some suggestions, you can let us know in the comments.
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Stella has been working in MiniTool Software as an English Editor for more than 7 years. Her articles mainly cover the fields of data recovery including storage media data recovery and phone data recovery, YouTube videos download, partition management, and video conversions.