Microsoft said it will introduce Sudo for Windows 11 as part of an early preview release to help users run commands with administrator privileges.
“Sudo for Windows represents a new way to allow users to run elevated commands directly from a non-elevated console session,” said Jordi Adoumie, Product Manager at Microsoft.
“It’s an ergonomic and familiar solution for users who want to elevate a command without having to first open a new elevated console.”
Sudo, short for superuser do, is a program for Unix-like computer operating systems that allows users to run programs with the security privileges of another user, usually a user with elevated permissions (for example, administrator).
The feature is available for Windows 11 build 26045 and later. It can be enabled by going to Settings > System > For Developers and setting “Enable sudo” to On.
Sudo for Windows comes with three options: run applications in a new console window with elevated privileges, run the process with elevated privileges in the current window but with the input stream (stdin) closed and in online mode.
“The online configuration option runs the process with elevated privileges in the current window, and the process is able to receive input from the current console session,” Redmond warns in its documentation.
“A non-elevated process can send input to the elevated process within the same console windows or get information from the output in the current windows in this configuration.”
Microsoft said it is also in the process of open-sourcing the project on GitHub, urging other users to contribute to the initiative as well as report issues and submit feature requests.