Source : Internet
These 6 Windows terminal commands are weirdly fun and surprisingly useful
Yadullah currently writes for MakeUseOf as a Staff Writer, covering cybersecurity, gaming, and consumer tech. He formerly worked as Associate Editor at Candid.Technology and as News Editor at The Mac Observer, where he reported on everything from raging cyberattacks to the latest in Apple tech.
In addition to his journalism work, Yadullah is a full-stack developer with experience in JavaScript/TypeScript, Next.js, the MERN stack, Python, C/C++, and AI/ML. Whether he's analyzing malware, reviewing hardware, or building tools on GitHub, he brings a hands-on, developer’s perspective to tech journalism.
Open a terminal, navigate to any folder of your choice, and type tree. What you'll see as the result isn't a dry list of files, it's a branching, visual diagram of your entire directory structure, drawn in ASCII characters right inside the terminal. Every subfolder branches off like a real tree, and if you add the /F flag, files inside the folder appear too.
Try running tree /F /A inside any directory, and you'll see years of chaotic file organization suddenly become evident. The /A flag switches from graphical box drawing characters to plain text symbols, which is handy if you want to copy the output to a document or email without it falling apart.
Netstat
Watch your internet traffic
Another version you should know is netstat -b. This also shows you the actual executable behind every connection. So if you've been noticing a suspicious background process that might be phoning home, this is the perfect command to start digging deep. Once you run the command a few times, you'll start to get an intuitive feel for what normal processes look like on your own machine.
cipher /w
Destroy your deleted files
When you delete a file in Windows, it doesn't instantly get permanently wiped off your storage drive. Windows just removes the pointer to where the file lives on disk and marks that space as available. So if you thought emptying the Recycle Bin deleted your files, you're wrong.
The cipher /w command fixes this. It's a built-in Windows tool that overwrites all the unallocated space on a drive three times, making any previously deleted files impossible to recover. The syntax is also straightforward; just type in cipher /w: followed by the drive letter. For example, to run the command on the C:\ drive, run this command:
cipher /w:C:
tracert
Map the entire Internet, one hop at a time
Type tracert makeuseof.com and hit Enter. You'll see a live trace of every single router your data hops through on its way to our servers—each one listed with its IP address and response time. The command works by sending packets with progressively increasing TTL (Time to Live), each one timing out one hop further along the route and reporting back. It's essentially a GPS breadcrumb trail for your internet connection.
One of the most practical uses for this is to figure out where your internet might be facing problems. When your internet feels slow, tracert tells you exactly where the slowdown is happening, whether it's your router, your ISP, or something further down the line.
The philosophical side is wild, too. Run the command and watch dozens of routers in different cities and countries respond to your little packet, one by one. It really gives the Internet a sense of actual physical infrastructure, something we rarely see.
Icanhazdadjoke
Fetch a Dad joke on command
Since Windows 11 includes curl natively, you can use the icanhazdadjoke.com public API to fetch random dad jokes as plain text. Simply put, run this command:
curl -H "Accept: text/plain" https://icanhazdadjoke.com
The command will get you fresh, terrible dad jokes every single time you run it. This one's mostly for fun, but it also serves as a genuinely useful sanity check for your internet connection. It's a lot more fun than pinging 8.8.8.8 and will sometimes make you chuckle.
More importantly, it's a low-stakes introduction to curl. It's one of the most powerful tools in the terminal for interacting with web APIs, downloading files, and testing network endpoints. The dad jokes will eventually stop being funny, but the curl muscle memory will stay with you.
PowerShell speech synthesizer
Make your computer talk
This is a PowerShell command rather than a Windows Terminal one, but it's equal parts ridiculous and interesting. Open PowerShell and run the following commands one at a time:
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Speech
$speak = New-Object System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer
$speak.Speak("You can now hear your PC speak.")
Your computer will say it out loud, using Windows' built-in text-to-speech engine. The System.Speech assembly is a full-featured .NET library that is accessible with just three lines of PowerShell code. You can even set the speaking rate, change the voice, and pipe in text from other commands.
Windows Terminal isn't as boring as you think
A handful of commands that start as fun experiments can quickly turn into tools you rely on. The next time Windows feels like a bloated GUI you have to wrestle with, fire up the terminal, and try a few of these commands.
You'll learn more about how your system and network really work, probably solve a couple of nagging problems, and even have some fun along the way. Once that happens, that black window with the blinking cursor stops being as intimidating.
Why?
Another brillant one is piping to "clip". Basic example below.
eg netstat -an | clip or dir *.exe /s | clip
Open notepad and paste in to see the result. Often better than writing to a file.
The dad joke command produced a series of error messages, no dad joke.
cipher /w is especially useful if you think the projected lifetime of your SSD is too long and want to reduce it.
You will then have a great justification (to someone who has a degree of control over your budget, e.g., spouse, parent, boss, etc.) to purchase one of higher capacity.