mintty

Mintty is a terminal emulator for Windows designed for use with Cygwin and MSYS environments. It provides a lightweight, native Windows alternative to X-based terminals, delivering xterm-compatible emulation without requiring an X server. Mintty runs as a standalone Windows executable and integrates with the shell environments commonly used in Cygwin and MSYS.

Key features of mintty include robust Unicode and UTF-8 support, enabling correct display of diverse character sets and scripts. It offers configurable fonts and color schemes, supports typical ANSI escape sequences used by Unix-like shells, and provides straightforward copy-paste functionality. The emulator emphasizes performance and simplicity, with native Win32 rendering and handling of typical terminal interactions such as cursor movement, line wrapping, and text selection.

Mintty is free and open-source software. It has become a widely adopted choice for Windows users running Bash-compatible environments under Cygwin or MSYS, and it is commonly distributed as the default terminal in various Windows-based Unix-like toolchains, including Git for Windows’ Git Bash. As such, it serves as a bridge between Windows and Unix-like workflows, enabling familiar command-line interfaces within a native Windows windowing environment.