ConEmu

ConEmu (ConEmu-Maximus5) is a console emulator for Windows, written in C++ and licensed under BSD-3-Clause. It starts console programs in a hidden console window and shows them in its own customizable GUI window, so cmd.exe, PowerShell, bash, WSL shells and other console programs can share one tabbed window. It began as a companion to Far Manager and grew out of an earlier ConEmu by Zoin. Cmder is built on top of it. It suits Windows users who want tabs, splits and a quake-style window around the shells they already use.

Settings are read from the registry or from a ConEmu.xml file, and command-line parameters are applied on top, so several named configurations can be kept side by side, for example one per PC. Most options are edited in a large Settings dialog. Tasks define named startup commands, such as a shell with a given working directory or a set of tabs and splits opened together, and GuiMacro exposes ConEmu's functions to scripts and key bindings.

Each tab can be split into resizable panes, and the window can run in normal, maximized, full-screen or quake-style drop-down mode. Fonts are configurable by family, height, width and style, with normal, bold and italic fonts used for different parts of the console at once, and anti-aliasing can be standard, ClearType or off. ConEmu supports ANSI escape sequences and xterm 256 colors, detects hyperlinks and file paths in output, shows operation progress on the Windows 7+ taskbar, can run old DOS programs through DosBox, and can be embedded in another window in Inside mode. Far Manager users get tabs for editors and viewers, thumbnails and tiles, and the full output of the last command in the editor.

ConEmu does not document GPU rendering, font ligatures or an inline image protocol. It runs on Windows XP and later (32-bit) or Vista and later (64-bit). The repository is not archived, but the last stable release, 23.07.24, came out in July 2023, and the only commits since then are a handful from April 2025.