Windows Terminal – Adding Launch Commands to Command Prompt

cmd.exewindowswindows-11windows-terminal

In a similar way to .bashrc on WSL2, I want to add custom commands to run when I open the Command Prompt in Windows Terminal, like winfetch for example. Is there any way to configure the Command Prompt profile so that it executes custom commands at startup?

Best Answer

This is possible by providing an autorun script for cmd.exe.
This is set via registry.

Open registry with regedit

navigate to:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor

A REG_SZ registry variable Autorun should exist with value set to 0. If registry variable not exits, create variable Autorun.

Set variable to your script, i.e. "%YOUR_PATH_TO_FILE%\my_startup_script.bat"

Example:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor\Autorun="%USERPROFILE%\my_startup_script.bat"

It is also possible to use HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\AutoRun.

Further reading:
Hidden gotcha: The command processor's AutoRun setting

Related Solutions

Windows – set Windows Terminal to open command windows from “start” in a new tab

This is possible with Windows Terminal from version 0.9 onwards.

wt -d . ; new-tab -d C:\ pwsh.exe

Opens the Terminal with two tabs. The first is running the default profile starting in the current working directory. The second is using the default profile with pwsh.exe as the "commandline" (instead of the default profile’s "commandline") starting in the C:\ directory.

There are more examples on how to use this in the release notes of Windows Terminal 0.9: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-preview-v0-9-release/

Windows Terminal – How to Create Multiple Profiles with Different Start Commands on WSL1 Ubuntu

There are several types of Windows Terminal profiles:

Dynamically generated profiles: This is what you are likely seeing by default with the Ubuntu profile. When starting up, Windows Terminal queries several "sources" for the shells that are installed, one of these being "Windows.Terminal.Wsl". You should see this if looking at your settings.json as the "source": "Windows.Terminal.Wsl" property on the profile.
There's a fairly recent "JSON fragment extension", which lets third-party installers insert their own profile fragment by storing it in a well-known directory.
And then there's the "basic" user-managed profile, which is what you are looking for in this case. Assuming you are using a fairly recent Windows Terminal release, it's easiest just to use the Settings GUI to create a new profile and set the Command Line there. But if you want to use settings.json, you'll typically want to substitute a "commandline" property instead of "source". For example:
```
{
    "commandline": "wsl.exe ~ -e tmux", 
    "name": "Ubuntu w/Tmux"
},
{
    "commandline": "wsl.exe ~ -e python3", 
    "name": "Python REPL in Ubuntu"
},
...
```
The ~ option starts WSL in the user's Linux $HOME directory. It must be the first option after the wsl command. -e command, as you probably expect, executes an alternative command on startup.

It would be best to remove the command that you've added to ~/.bashrc and simply create two profiles -- One for each command you want to start.

But if you really did want two separate ~/.bashrc files, then the "commandline" would look something like (untested):

wsl.exe ~ -e bash --rcfile ~/.other_bashrc

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – set Windows Terminal to open command windows from “start” in a new tab

Windows Terminal – How to Create Multiple Profiles with Different Start Commands on WSL1 Ubuntu

Related Question