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Terminals

Mintty

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Mintty is the default terminal application in MSYS2 and is included in the installer. We also include some custom Mintty integration by providing separate launchers with corresponding .ini configuration files (msys2{.exe,.ini}/ucrt64{.exe,.ini}/...) for all the MSYS2 environments, so you can easily configure your environments and pin the launchers to your Windows taskbar.

See https://github.com/msys2/msys2-launcher and https://mintty.github.io for more details.

Windows Terminal

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The new Windows Terminal application, which by default supports cmd, powershell and WSL can also be extended to support a MSYS2 shell.

  • Get it via the Windows app store if you don't have it installed already.
  • In the tab dropdown menu select "Settings" which opens a code editor showing a JSON configuration file.
  • Insert the example profiles shown below under the profiles key. Note that the examples assume that you have MSYS2 installed under C:\msys64.
  • You can make one of the MSYS2 profiles the default by setting the defaultProfile key to the guid value of one of the profile entries.

For more info on the different profile settings see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/profile-settings 

// This makes UCRT64 the default shell
"defaultProfile": "{17da3cac-b318-431e-8a3e-7fcdefe6d114}",
"profiles": {
  "list":
  [
    // ...
    {
      "guid": "{17da3cac-b318-431e-8a3e-7fcdefe6d114}",
      "name": "UCRT64 / MSYS2",
      "commandline": "C:/msys64/msys2_shell.cmd -defterm -here -no-start -ucrt64",
      "startingDirectory": "C:/msys64/home/%USERNAME%",
      "icon": "C:/msys64/ucrt64.ico",
      "font": 
      {
        "face": "Lucida Console",
        "size": 9
      }
    },
    {
      "guid": "{71160544-14d8-4194-af25-d05feeac7233}",
      "name": "MSYS / MSYS2",
      "commandline": "C:/msys64/msys2_shell.cmd -defterm -here -no-start -msys",
      "startingDirectory": "C:/msys64/home/%USERNAME%",
      "icon": "C:/msys64/msys2.ico",
      "font": 
      {
        "face": "Lucida Console",
        "size": 9
      }
    },
    // ...
  ]
}
  • The commandline in that profile will launch bash shell by default. To change default login shell, install the corresponding package for that shell and append -shell option with the command line. For example,
  • To set fish shell as default: 
    "commandline": "C:/msys64/msys2_shell.cmd -defterm -here -no-start -ucrt64 -shell fish"
  • To set zsh shell as default: 
    "commandline": "C:/msys64/msys2_shell.cmd -defterm -here -no-start -ucrt64 -shell zsh"

Konsole

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Konsole is a powerful and customizable terminal emulator made by KDE. MSYS2 provides it as a mingw package. To use it with MSYS2, first install the appropriate package and create a new profile with the following steps.

  • In the Konsole window menu bar, select "Settings" > "Create New Profile...".
  • Select it as a default profile to always open msys2 environment at start.
  • Add profile name and following command.
C:\\msys64\\msys2_shell.cmd -defterm -here -no-start -ucrt64
  • Now close and restart Konsole.

Cmder

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Cmder is a portable console emulator for Windows based on ConEmu that aims to provide a portable and convenient terminal for Windows. It comes bundled with most of the popular UNIX commands and supports a quake-style slide drop down that allows immediate access to the terminal via a global keyboard shortcut.

To use it with MSYS2, click the hamburger menu on the right lower bar and click settings to open the settings window.

  1. Navigate to Startup > Tasks and then click the + symbol to create a new task. You can set any name you like, for example bash::msys2 ucrt64.

  2. In the command section, copy the following script:

set MSYSTEM=UCRT64 & set "CHERE_INVOKING=1" & "C:\msys64\usr\bin\bash.exe" --login -i

  1. Click Save Settings button.

  2. Open a new tab with the shortcut Ctrl + T. On the new console dialog, select the task you just created and then click the Start button.

To customize further, you can press Ctrl + Alt + P to open the settings window and set the task you created as the default one. You can also click the Startup dir button to change the default startup directory.