The command line remains one of the most powerful tools in any operating system, and that, of course, includesWindows 11. You may be used to using a graphical interface for most things, but there's still a ton you can do with just a shell and some text.
And while some classic Windows commands are well known, there are quite a lot of options out there you may never have heard of, or that you haven't given a proper shot yet. So let's take a look at a few command-line tools you're probably not using on your Windows PC, but you really should be.
Winget
Not the most uncommon option, but still
Let's start with a relatively well-known one we've praised a lot: Winget, or the Windows Package Manager. For decades, people have known one way to install all their apps, and that's by going on their web browser, searching for the app they want, and downloading it from a website. Windows 8 introduced the idea of a centralized app store, which was a nice idea in concept, but far too limited, and even today, the Microsoft Store is missing a lot of apps that many people would consider essential.
Winget is a command-line tool that's been shipping with Windows for a few years now, and it's the best way to install most of your apps these days. Using a simplewinget install command, you can get just about any app you might want. This tool can fetch apps from the Microsoft Store, but also from its own repository that has infinitely more popular apps, including web browsers, anti-malware software, screenshot tools, chat apps, and so much more. There's a very large pool of trustworthy apps available already.
And on top of that, you can use Winget to backup and reinstall lists of apps, so when you set up a new computer for the first time, you can get all your apps in one go. It's an incredibly useful tool and a huge time saver.
Stop downloading software from websites: Windows has a built-in package manager
Make things easier for yourself
SDelete
Delete your files securely
Did you know that when you delete files from your PC, that data isn't actually being erased? Indeed, to slow down the wear and tear of a hard drive, Windows will typically just mark space as unused so that it can be overwritten, and this opens a pathway for file recovery tools such as Recuva to find files you previously deleted. It's only when new data is written over the portions of the drive where those files were that the data usually becomes inaccessible.
That's why Windows comes with a tool to "clean your drive" when you reset it. If you intend to sell your PC, cleaning the drive overwrites your data with empty data so that files can't be recovered by the next owner. But what if you could just do that for individual files as you delete them?
5 SysInternals tools that instantly make Windows better
These things should be part of Windows, really
That's where SDelete comes into the picture. This is a command-line tool that's part of SysInternals, a suite officially maintained by Microsoft, and it allows you to securely delete files. By running SDelete in your terminal, you can choose how many passes to use to overwrite the space left behind by a file and ensure that said file won't be recovered in the event that someone attempts to breach your hard drive.
SDelete
ViveTool
For the tinkerers
I need to preface this one with a big caveat: ViveTool is definitely not for the average user. This is a program that's designed to leverage a hidden system in Windows, which Microsoft uses to test or gradually roll out features. Using something called feature IDs, certain features in Windows can be turned on or off for a given machine, which is how Microsoft often bundles features into Windows but doesn't enable them for one reason or another.
ViVeTool GUI makes it easier to enable hidden Windows 11 features
For users who don't want to use Windows Terminal to enable Windows 11 features, ViVeTool GUI is a handy tool with some nice features.
ViveTool simply allows you to enable or disable feature IDs, which typically allows you to try certain new features ahead of time. A big one that happened recently was the new Xbox gaming handheld experience that the company initially made exclusive to the Asus ROG Xbox Ally family. If you wanted to use it on other handhelds, you'd need to use ViveTool to enable it (in addition to some other changes). There have been many more instances of this, though, and ViveTool has been the go-to way to enable these features for a few years now.
ViveTool
Exporting and importing drivers
Pnputil to the rescue
This is another tool we've covered recently, and it's actually built right into Windows, though it's very likely you've never used it yourself. Installing drivers can be a pain on a lot of PCs, and when you reset a computer, it takes a long time to get back into using it because of drivers, apps, and everything else you need to set up.
But through thepnputil command, you can actually back up your installed drivers and restore them in one fell swoop. On a PC with all the drivers you need, simply open the temrinal and type in:
pnputil /export-driver * "C:\Path\to\Folder"
Of course, you'll have to replace the bold part with the actual path to the folder where you want to store the drivers. Then, once you've moved the drivers to an external location and you've reinstalled Windows on your PC, you can use this command to reinstall all those drivers:
pnputil /add-driver "C:\Path\to\Folder*.inf" /subdirs /install /reboot
It's much easier than installing these drivers manually and it can save you a ton of time.
Yazi
A terminal file browser
If you're someone who prefers living in the terminal at all times, a file browser that also works inside of it probably sounds like a great idea, and Yazi is exactly that. Yazi is a file manager built in Rust that runs entirely within your terminal, and it works better than you'd probably expect.
Yazi makes it very easy to jump in and out of folders and navigate subdirectories, making it easy to get to the files you need at any given time, and it's very readable and easy to use. Because it's written in Rust, it's both lightweight and fast, so you won't feel like it's slowing down your experience.
Yazi
Starship
Give your terminal a touch-up
Finally, there's Starship, which is a customization tool for shell environments. Rather than a tool you runinside a command line, Starship can add a very wide range of customizations to your shells, including the Command Prompt and PowerShell, and it's fully configurable and lightweight, thanks in part to being written in Rust.
I gave the Windows Terminal the "Pimp my Ride" treatment and it's so much fun now
Why settle for a drab terminal existence?
You can change all kinds of things with Starship, with different syntax highlighting, more colorful path indicators, and other formatting changes to make your terminal truly your own. Starship comes with a barebones setup that you can fully design from the ground up, but there's also a page with different presets you can use to get started. There are actually other tools like this such as Oh My Posh, but Starship is a fantastic cross-platform offering.
Starship
Make the most of your terminal
Whether you're an avid user of the Windows Terminal already or not, the tools above will make it that much easier to start spending more time there. They can do things you can't really do as easily with just a mouse, boosting your productivity and reducing downtime.
