Hyper is a JavaScript, HTML and CSS-based terminal

Hyper is a very configurable open-source Electron-based terminal. On Windows it uses the regular command prompt by default, but can be tweaked to support PowerShell or whatever shell you’d prefer.

Launch the program and it just looks like a regular command prompt with a slightly different font and window style. But wait: Hyper is powered by Chromium, and some familiar Chrome-type features are just a tap or two away.

Would you like another tab, for instance? Press Ctrl+T, as normal, or Ctrl+N to open a new Hyper window.

Individual tabs can be split horizontally (Ctrl+Shift+O) or vertically (Ctrl+Shift+E), enabling viewing the results of commands side-by-side.

The standard font is a little small, but that can be fixed in the usual way: press Ctrl and + to zoom in, Ctrl and -- to zoom out.

This is all very configurable, once you find the relevant file (.hyper.js in your \users\username folder). You’re able to tweak the default font, cursor size, text color, apply custom CSS to the terminal window, the shell to use, adjust some copy and paste rules, and more.

In theory, Hyper’s strength should be its selection of plugins, packages and extensions. There are new themes, visual customizations, simple extensions to behavior (making URLs clickable, drag and drop support for tabs), and some much more ambitious projects (a LastPass plugin for autofilling passwords).

In practice, the plugins system never even began to work on our test Windows 10 system, failing with a cryptic error and telling us to check a log which didn’t exist. Gee, thanks.

Don’t let our issues put you off entirely. Hyper works at a simple level as a tabbed, configurable command line. If our plugin problems are rare, you might have better luck, especially on Linux or Mac, and if they’re common they’ll probably be fixed soon.

Hyper is available now for Windows, Linux and Mac.