How in the Tech

Changing the Command Prompt Font in Vista

By Adam Myers ⋅ May 13, 2008 ⋅ Tags: command prompt, fonts, registry editor

Microsoft introduced the Consolas Cleartype fixed-width font with Office 2007 and later shipped it with Vista. The cleartype rendering technology is aimed at improving your on-screen reading experience by using anti-aliasing on fonts. The effect is most effective on LCD flat panel monitors. Fixed-width fonts are fonts that have the same width for every character - quite popular with programmers as it visually improves their ability to read and write code. Consolas melds both of these principles yet Microsoft chose to stick with Raster Fonts for the default Command Prompt font.

As is usually the norm when it comes to tweaking and customizing Microsoft products, this change requires diving into the Registry Editor.

1. Click Start and in the Start Search box type regedit.exe
2. Traverse the Registry Editor navigation tree on the left hand side down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont



3. Right click in the right hand side panel and select New->String Value.
4. Name the string 00 and assign it a value of Consolas
   • If the string 00 already exists, use 000



5. Lastly, close out of Registry Editor and reboot your computer to apply the change.

The next time you run Command Prompt bring up the Properties dialog - right click in the menu bar and select Properties. Click the Font tab and you should see the option for three fonts: Consolas, Lucida Console, and Raster Fonts.

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