Useful PowerShell One-Liners

Updated: 2025-01-15 ∙ 5 mins read ∙ Tags: Dev, Automation, Windows, PowerShell

Some neat, time-saving PowerShell plug-and-play commands

Is this about comedy?

• Objective
• Prerequisites
• Background
• PowerShell One-Liners
  • Time of the Last Reboot
  • Find Your Public IP Address
  • Find Domain Controllers on Your Domain
  • List Software Available for Uninstall
  • Install PowerShell Core (6 and 7)
  • Get Free Space for System Drive
  • Get Parent Process(es)
  • List Subdirectories in the Current Directory
  • List Started Services
  • Tail a File
  • Port Scanner
  • Common WMI (CIM) Queries
  • Get Time Until Next Year
  • Cat Facts
  • Get a Random XKCD Comic
• Conclusion
• Related Links

Objective

This post aims to document some useful one-liners I’ve come across as part of everyday usage of PowerShell. Hopefully, you’ll find some of these powerful, time-saving, and fun to play around with!

Many of these one-liners were taken from various blogs, social media, etc., and are not necessarily my own.

Prerequisites

Windows PowerShell 5.1 (unless otherwise specified), usually run as administrator

Background

Part of learning PowerShell is simply writing code and getting a feel for what the output should look like. Go ahead, copy and of these one-liners into your PowerShell console. What do you expect to see? What did you actually see?

PowerShell One-Liners

Time of the Last Reboot

(Get-CimInstance Win32_OperatingSystem).LastBootUpTime

Find Your Public IP Address

(Invoke-RestMethod ipinfo.io/json).ip

Find Domain Controllers on Your Domain

Resolve-DnsName -Type ALL -Name _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.$env:userdnsdomain

List Software Available for Uninstall

Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | Format-Table

Install PowerShell Core (6 and 7)

Invoke-Expression "& { $(Invoke-RestMethod -Uri aka.ms/install-powers…) }" -UseMSI -Preview

Get Free Space for System Drive

(Get-PSDrive $Env:SystemDrive.Trim(':')).Free/1GB

Get Parent Process(es)

foreach ($prid in ($ppid = foreach ($process in (Get-Process -Name "powershell")) { (Get-CimInstance Win32_Process | Where-Object processid -EQ $process.Id).parentprocessid })) { Get-Process -Id $prid }

List Subdirectories in the Current Directory

Get-ChildItem -Directory

List Started Services

Get-Service | Where-Object {$_.status -eq "Started"}

Tail a File

Get-Content ./logfile.log -Tail 5 –Wait

Port Scanner

0..65535 | Foreach-Object { Test-NetConnection -Port $_ scanme.nmap.org -WA SilentlyContinue | Format-Table -Property ComputerName,RemoteAddress,RemotePort,TcpTestSucceeded }

Common WMI (CIM) Queries

# BIOS Version
(Get-CimInstance Win32_BIOS).SMBIOSBIOSVersion

# Serial Number
(Get-CimInstance Win32_BIOS).SerialNumber

# Model
(Get-CimInstance Win32_ComputerSystem).Model

# Printers
Get-CimInstance Win32_Printer | Select-Object Name, PortName, Default

# Active Directory Domain
(Get-CimInstance Win32_ComputerSystem).Domain

Get Time Until Next Year

(Get-Date -Date "$((Get-Date).Year + 1)/1/1") - (Get-Date)

Cat Facts

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri 'https://catfact.ninja/fact' -UseBasicParsing | Select-Object -ExpandProperty 'Content' | ConvertFrom-Json | Select-Object -ExpandProperty fact

Get a Random XKCD Comic

Invoke-RestMethod "http://xkcd.com/$(Get-Random -min 0 -max 2000)/info.0.json" | Select-Object title, transcript, alt, img | Format-List

Conclusion

Hopefully, you’ve found some snippets in this post useful. For me, one-liners have been fun, interactive ways to play with PowerShell and test my knowledge, expectations, and push the language to its limits.

Have a cool one-liner you’d like to add to this doc? Feel free to drop a comment or edit this page directly on GitHub using the button below.

Want more one-liners? Click here.

/dadjoke 🙃

Related Links

• What’s a PowerShell One-Liner & NOT a PowerShell One-Liner?
• PowerShell One-Liners: Help, Syntax, Display and Files

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