How to turn on auto-complete in the command prompt

Posted on September 10, 2008 at 5:37 am

Do you use the command prompt on a daily basis? If you do, then this tip is definitely for you! I recently found out that there is a way to turn on auto-complete for the command prompt via a simple registry hack. So that means if you are typing in a long path, simply type in the first few letters and then press TAB to auto-complete.

For example, if I am typing in C:\Documents and Settings\, I would just need to type in C:\Doc and then press the TAB key.

enable auto complete command prompt

dos prompt auto complete

As you can see, there is only one option that starts with “doc”, so it’s automatically filled along with quotes since it has spaces in the path! Now that’s pretty neat. I always loved using auto-complete in Windows Explorer or even in Open and Save dialogs, but never knew it could be done in the command prompt also.

You can also browse through the different folders and files in a directory by simply pressing the TAB key. So if you type in C:\ and then keep pressing the tab key, you will be able to cycle through all the folders and files in that path in alphabetical order, i.e. C:\Documents and Settings, C:\Program Files\, etc.

How to enable auto-complete for command prompt

Step 1: Click on Start, then Run and type in regedit

regedit

Step 2: Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor

Step 3: Double-click on the “CompletionChar” key and change the value to 9

completionchar

Now close regedit and open the command prompt. Start typing in a partial path and then press TAB to auto-complete it! Pretty sweet eh! Great for anyone who has to work with the command prompt a lot. Enjoy!

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4 Responses to “How to turn on auto-complete in the command prompt”

  1. DWiner said on : September 10th, 2008 at 8:29 am

    Isn’t this feature turned on by default in the OS…I mean in XP? The value on my machine is 40…and I am able to use auto complete feature without any hack. Were you referring to some other OS?


  2. akishore said on : September 10th, 2008 at 9:18 am

    DWiner, I also had a value of 40 in mine, but was not able to use the auto complete feature. Maybe something is wrong with my machine…I am on XP SP2.


  3. Gururaj said on : September 10th, 2008 at 7:58 pm

    Thanks. This is a neat little trick. I’m not sure whether it would have worked with a value of 40 or not but all the same, the autocomplete feature is convenient especially when you need to input names of files in Japanese, where you need to change to IME.


  4. Windows Vista said on : September 11th, 2008 at 6:14 am

    Fantastic little tip - in all these years I didn’t know this was possible… I use the command prompt all the time (still!), so this will save me some time :)


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