Running admin commands on Windows has always felt clunky. You either have to open a new elevated command prompt or right-click everything just to complete simple tasks as an administrator, while Linux has implemented a cleaner solution for as long as I remember. Windows 11 finally made one upgrade to fix this, and you are probably still sleeping on it. Once you enable this feature, all you need to do to run an elevated command is start by typing sudo. After I enabled sudo last week, I’m not going back to the old Windows terminal.
“Access denied” used to end my afternoon
Now four letters get me back to work
You may be familiar with this message: “You must be an administrator running a console session in order to use the SFC utility.” That’s the message you get in Command Prompt when you try to run an admin-level command without admin rights. It’s frustrating because it usually means taking a few extra steps: closing that terminal, searching for a new terminal in the Start menu, right-clicking it, clicking Run as administrator, and then clicking Yes on the UAC prompt. By the time you’re done, you’ve likely lost your place or train of thought.
Apart from the extra time and steps involved in opening an elevated terminal, you’re actually breaking your train of thought when you most need it — mid-troubleshooting or several steps into a guide.
This single toggle fixes it:
- Open the Settings app (Windows + I).
- Navigate to System > Advanced and toggle on Enable sudo.
There are three options for running it that you can select by expanding the Enable sudo option:
- In a new window
- With input disabled
- Inline
Inline is the closest implementation to Linux sudo, where the current window just elevates the one command and hands control right back to you. After trying all three, inline matches how I prefer to work and has been the one I’ve stuck with.
It felt so empowering running sudo winget upgrade, and watching it run from a normal command terminal. One simple prefix replaced several tedious steps. As I watched the command run, all I could wonder was why it took Microsoft so long to implement this tiny but incredibly valuable update that Linux had long offered before I got my first PC.
Windows borrowed the shortcut
UAC is still calling the shots behind the scenes
Sudo on Linux temporarily grants elevated privileges to a single command and returns control to the user once that command finishes executing. The entire point of this design is to avoid permanently remaining in an admin session. In practice, that means only elevating what needs elevating and nothing else.
While Windows now offers the design along with the convenience, the underlying philosophy is still lacking. Typing sudo still invokes User Account Control (UAC), which prompts for elevation when required. That’s the same barrier that has existed since the days of Vista. The only thing removed was the need for a whole new elevated terminal to run the command (in inline mode).
This is still a convenience win, and, to be fair, there was no way Microsoft would have adopted the entire Linux model even if it had wanted to. These two systems fundamentally handle permissions differently, so a straight copy-and-paste is no longer an option. So Microsoft excluded the parts of sudo that require re-architecting the OS and adopted the part that brings convenience to daily workflows.
If you don’t see the sudo option in Settings, update your OS to the latest build.
|
Linux sudo |
Old Windows elevation |
Windows 11 sudo |
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
How you elevate |
Type sudo before a command |
Right-click, run as admin |
Type sudo before a command |
|
Second window needed |
No |
Yes |
No, in inline mode |
|
Uses a consent check |
Password prompt |
UAC prompt |
UAC prompt |
|
What gets elevated |
Just that command |
Entire session |
Just that command |
My elevated terminal is idle most days
The one workflow that still sends me back to it
After enabling sudo, it’s been the only way I run elevated commands on Windows. winget upgrades, SFC scans, and tweaking settings that need permissions are one-line jobs that inline mode now handles.
However, I still go back to opening elevated terminals for specific tasks like running DISM repairs with several flags or a script that interacts with several protected files back-to-back. In these cases, it quickly gets old if I have to invoke sudo before every single command. Those are the kinds of jobs that Windows sudo wasn’t built for.
If I already know a session will require administrator rights, I open an elevated terminal from the start. I reserve sudo for the unexpected interruptions that would otherwise break my flow.
Windows found a good idea and didn’t ruin it
Windows users who rarely touch the command line will not notice or need this update. But it will matter a lot to developers, IT admins, and power users. In fact, my theory for why this update is buried deep in the Settings app is that Windows knows who will benefit from it and hides it somewhere only those users are likely to look.
Windows sudo currently works in Windows Terminal, Command Prompt, and PowerShell. I started by saying that I’m not going back to the old way. It didn’t take me a week to figure this out. It’s been one of those tiny upgrades that affect daily workflows in ways that really matter.