6 Must‑Know Windows Terminal Commands to Boost Productivity

Windows Terminal has evolved into a versatile tool with tab support, custom themes, and GPU acceleration, making command‑line utilities accessible to both developers and everyday users. This article presents six useful commands that enhance system understanding, automate tasks, and improve privacy.

1. tree command

Run tree in any directory to display an ASCII tree of folders. Adding the /F switch shows files as well, and /A forces plain‑text characters for easier copying.

Example: tree /F /A produces a clean text representation that can be redirected with tree /F > directory.txt for later analysis.

2. netstat command

Use netstat -a to list all active network connections, ports, and remote IP addresses. The -b option also displays the owning executable, helping identify suspicious processes. For PID information, combine -ano and cross‑reference with Task Manager.

3. cipher /w command

The cipher /w:C: command overwrites all free space on the specified drive with random data, securely erasing remnants of deleted files. It operates only on unallocated space, leaving existing files untouched, and works on any Windows version since XP.

4. tracert command

Execute tracert baidu.com (or any host) to display each hop’s IP address and latency, visualizing the route packets take across the internet. Options such as -d skip DNS resolution for speed, and -h 60 increase the maximum hop count.

5. curl command with icanhazdadjoke API

Windows 11 includes curl natively. Fetch a random dad joke with:

curl -H "Accept: text/plain" https://icanhazdadjoke.com

Redirect the output to a file using > joke.txt. This demonstrates basic HTTP requests, custom headers, and API interaction directly from the terminal.

6. PowerShell speech synthesizer

Switch to PowerShell ( pwsh) and run three commands to make the computer speak:

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Speech
$speak = New-Object System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer
$speak.Speak("You can now hear the computer speaking.")

Adjust the voice with $speak.Rate = -2 or select a different voice via $speak.SelectVoice("Microsoft Zira"). This can be embedded in scripts for notifications, accessibility, or fun demos.

These six commands illustrate how Windows Terminal can replace many GUI tasks, offering visual directory trees, network diagnostics, secure data wiping, route tracing, simple API calls, and even voice feedback, thereby turning the command line into a powerful, efficient workspace.