How to make Unicode charset in cmd.exe by default? - windows

Question

866 charset installed by default in Windows' cmd.exe is poor and inconvinient as compared with glorious Unicode.
Can I install Unicode by default or replace cmd.exe to another console and make it default so programms use it instead of cmd.exe?
I understand that chcp 65001 changes encoding only in the running console. I want to change charset at the system level.

Answer 1

After I tried algirdas' solution, my Windows crashed (Win 7 Pro 64bit) so I decided to try a different solution:
Start Run (Win+R)
Type cmd /K chcp 65001
You will get mostly what you want. To start it from the taskbar or anywhere else, make a shortcut (you can name it cmd.unicode.exe or whatever you like) and change its Target to C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /K chcp 65001.

Answer 2

Open an elevated Command Prompt (run cmd as administrator).
query your registry for available TT fonts to the console by:
REG query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont"
You'll see an output like :
0 REG_SZ Lucida Console
00 REG_SZ Consolas
936 REG_SZ *新宋体
932 REG_SZ *ＭＳ ゴシック
Now we need to add a TT font that supports the characters you need like Courier New, we do this by adding zeros to the string name, so in this case the next one would be "000" :
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont" /v 000 /t REG_SZ /d "Courier New"
Now we implement UTF-8 support:
REG ADD HKCU\Console /v CodePage /t REG_DWORD /d 65001 /f
Set default font to "Courier New":
REG ADD HKCU\Console /v FaceName /t REG_SZ /d "Courier New" /f
Set font size to 20 :
REG ADD HKCU\Console /v FontSize /t REG_DWORD /d 20 /f
Enable quick edit if you like :
REG ADD HKCU\Console /v QuickEdit /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Answer 3

Save the following into a file with ".reg" suffix:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console\%SystemRoot%_system32_cmd.exe]
"CodePage"=dword:0000fde9
Double click this file, and regedit will import it.
It basically sets the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console\%SystemRoot%_system32_cmd.exe\CodePage to 0xfde9 (65001 in decimal system).

Answer 4

For me, for Visual Studio 2022, it worked when I executed this ".reg" command.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console\C:_Program Files_Microsoft Visual Studio_2022_Professional_Common7_IDE_CommonExtensions_Platform_Debugger_VsDebugConsole.exe]
"CodePage"=dword:0000fde9
It is based on #Shaohua Li's answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/24711864/2941313. It does the same thing but for different path (specifically for VS2022 console).