Changing the width of a Windows console window?

Question

Is it possible to programatically, or otherwise, increase the width of the Windows console window? Or do I need to create a wrapper program that looks and acts like the console somehow? Are there any programs around that do this already? I use cygwin extensively in my development, and it seems a little rediculous to me that all console windows in Windows are width limited.

If it matters at all, I'm running Windows XP.

Answer 1

If you right click on the title bar of a command window and choose properties, you can change widths in the Layout tab

Answer 2

Click on the icon on the top left of the console frame (the one that looks like "C:\"), then select Properties . This lets you customize all kinds of stuff. The "layout" tab has the width of the window.

Answer 3

To get all future console windows in a specific size you can create a shortcut to cmd.exe and then set size on the layout-tab of the shortcut properties.

Answer 4

In console properties at the Layout tab you can configure the following:

Screen Buffer Size Width

Window Size Width

The Window Size Width is how many characters per line will be visible. The Screen Buffer Size is the size of the line. If you set for example the Window Size Width at 100 and the Screen Buffer Size Width at 200, you will need to use the scrollbar to view the whole contents of lines with sizes between 100 and 200. Lines longer than 200 characters will appear in more than one line. This is useful if you have long lines and you want to copy them in a text file.

The same things apply for Windows PowerShell

Answer 5

There is a window's api function to set the width. Here's a tut on it. http://www.adrianxw.dk/SoftwareSite/Consoles/Consoles6.html

Answer 6

Simply run "mode cols,lines" to change the size of the current console window:

mode 120,60

will resize the console window to 120 columns and 60 lines