How to Change the Colour In Batch Files and Command Prompt

If you have ever made batch files or used command prompt on windows, you have probably noticed that the default command prompt window is white text on a black background. If you have ever wondered if there is a way to change these colours, well yes their is thanks to the 'color' command.

To use it, simply type 'color', followed by the two digit colour code representing your background and foreground (text) colours. These digits are the hexadecimal values representing the 16 available colours to choose from, as listed below. A valid example would be to type 'color 25', to set the background to green and the text to purple.

Colour	Code	Colour	Code
Black	0	Grey	8
Blue	1	Light Blue	9
Green	2	Light Green	A
Aqua	3	Light Aqua	B
Red	4	Light Red	C
Purple	5	Light Purple	D
Yellow	6	Light Yellow	E
White	7	Bright White	F

You can get this list in command prompt by using the 'color' command followed by an invalid colour code. Something to note is that if you just want to change the text colour, you an simply use the one digit colour code for that colour, such as using 'color 2' to set the text colour to green.

Make a Simple Text to Speech Windows Programs

Have you ever wanted to make your own text to speech program? Well you can use the following code to make a visual basics script program to turn your typing into speech using Microsoft SAPI.

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Dim Message, Speak Message=InputBox("Enter your text","Text to Speech") Set Speak=CreateObject("sapi.spvoice") Speak.Speak Message

Just open notepad and copy this text. Save with whatever name you want, as long as it ends with the .vbs file extension. Then just double-click on the icon to open the program. The program gives you a text box where you can type what you want it to say.