Pro Tips

Practical tips, shortcuts, and best practices to level up your developer workflow.

1. Use Git Bash as your default terminal on Windows
2. Learn essential terminal commands

💡 Pro Tip #1: Use Git Bash as your default terminal on Windows

If you're developing on Windows, your terminal matters more than you might think. PowerShell and Command Prompt use different commands and path conventions than macOS and Linux. That means commands you copy from documentation, codelabs, or Stack Overflow often won't work as-is.

Git Bash solves this by giving you a Unix-like shell right on Windows — the same shell environment used in virtually every tutorial, CI pipeline, and server you'll encounter. Commands like ls, touch, grep, and forward-slash paths all work without translation. It's included when you install Git for Windows — no extra download needed.

Prerequisite: Git Bash is bundled with Git for Windows. If you haven't installed it yet, download and run the installer first — the defaults are fine.

Set Git Bash as the default terminal in your IDE

You can switch to Git Bash inside the integrated terminal in just a few steps — after this you'll never need to open PowerShell or CMD:

Open the Command Palette with Ctrl + Shift + P
Type select default profile into the search bar and select Terminal: Select Default Profile from the results.
Choose Git Bash from the drop-down list of shells your IDE detects on your system.
Open a new terminal with Ctrl + ` (the backtick), or go to Terminal > New Terminal from the menu. The new terminal will open as Git Bash.

These steps work the same way in Visual Studio Code, Antigravity, and any other IDE built on VS Code.

Tip: verify you're in Git Bash by running echo $SHELL — it should print something like /usr/bin/bash.

Terminal

echo $SHELL

💡 Pro Tip #2: Learn essential terminal commands

A few basic commands can save you a lot of frustration when following codelabs.

These commands work in macOS Terminal and in Git Bash on Windows.

Most common commands and what they do

pwd — Shows your current folder path.
ls — Lists files and folders in your current location.
ls -la — Lists all files, including hidden ones, with extra details.
cd folder-name — Moves into a folder.
cd .. — Moves up one folder level.
mkdir my-folder — Creates a new folder.
clear — Clears the terminal screen without closing it.
Ctrl + C — Stops the command currently running.

Quick practice