The Command Prompt has been part of the Windows operating system for a long time, but the Command Prompt had not seen any major update in the past two decades.
The Command Prompt has finally been updated in Windows 10 with several small but useful features. The most prominent feature is, of course, the ability to perform copy and paste operations using Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V keys. Besides that, the Command Prompt window can be maximized to occupy the entire screen if and when required.
In addition to the features mentioned above, the Command Prompt can now be customized to make it fully transparent or adjust the transparency level to make it semi-transparent without the help of third-party tools.
The feature comes in handy when you want to execute a set of commands mentioned on a webpage or document on your computer without simply copy and pasting them. By making the Command Prompt window partially transparent, you can view the Command Prompt window as well as the instructions mentioned on the webpage or document without having to switch to the webpage or document.
As you likely know, in previous versions of Windows, one had to use third-party tools to get transparent Command Prompt. We had even reviewed a small utility to get transparent Command Prompt in Windows 7.
Change Command Prompt opacity level in Windows 10
Follow the given below directions to make the Command Prompt fully transparent or adjust the opacity level to make it semi-transparent.
Step 1: Open Command Prompt. This can be done by either typing CMD in the Start menu search box followed by the Enter key or right-clicking on the Start button and then clicking Command Prompt.
Step 2: Once the Command Prompt window is launched, right-click on the titlebar, and then click Properties to open Command Prompt properties dialog.
Step 3: Here, switch to the last tab, labeled Colors.
Step 4: Under the Opacity section, as you can see, the opacity level is 100% by default. To make the Command Prompt fully transparent, move the slider to the extreme left side of the screen (30%). To make Command Prompt partially transparency set a value between 50 to 80.
Windows OS shows the live preview of the transparency level by automatically applying the opacity value to Command Prompt.
Once done, click the OK button to save the set opacity level.
How to adjust Start menu transparency level and how to make the taskbar fully transparent guides might also interest you.
mirai maria says
hello, i try to make my cmd transparent but its look like the Opacity slider being disabled. do you know what could be the reason is? . thanks a lot :)
coffee-turtle says
Thanks for the guide on changing the background through the GUI. I was actually wondering if you could make the transparency change programmatically as we can with the colors in my example above?
Thanks.
coffee-turtle says
I believe you once explained that you can create a cmd line with preset properties such as:
start cmd /k “color 1F&prompt $v”
which will be CMD PROMPT BLUE BACKGROUND BRIGHT WHITE TEXT AND PROMPT IS WINDOWS VERSION NUMBER
How can we similarly incorporate the transparency feature?
Thanks!