My PowerShell Profile

Updated: 2020-08-31 ∙ 6 mins read ∙ Tags: Dev, Automation, Windows, PowerShell
My PowerShell Profile

Neat functions I’ve added to make my life easier

Are we automated yet?

Objective

Share my PowerShell profile with the world in a digestible manner. Explain the main functions, how you can install my profile, and optionally contribute.

Prerequisites

You’re going to learn a lot but you’re also expected to come to the table with a few things. If you plan to follow along, be sure you have the following:

  1. Windows 10 (tested on 1903 and newer)
  2. Windows PowerShell (tested on 5.1 and 7.0), run as administrator

Background

Profiles are loaded every time you launch PowerShell. You can add fancy functions to your profile to make your life easier (such as Get-CatFacts 🐱).

PowerShell profiles are unique—they’re personal. They’re living things, just as your needs change over time, I expect your PowerShell profile will as well, heck mine sure has (just look at my commit history).

Realistically, I see basic functions like setting the default directory when you launch PowerShell, importing some modules, setting some aliases being universal. You may not need any of these, just like you don’t need a PowerShell profile at all, but we’re talking about the quality of life here, not needs.

PowerShell profiles are a rabbit hole for sure. Every blog post I’ve seen goes into (excruciating) detail on the different types of profiles, which one you’ll need, etc. I’ll save you the time (and handle it for you), but if you’re interested, go check out the official PowerShell docs.

Proof of Concept

Before we dive in, here’s a taste. Try the following:

  1. Open PowerShell as administrator

  2. Create your profile by typing New-Item $profile

    You’ll get an error if the file already exists. This is expected.

  3. Copy the code block below into your $profile 
    Set-Location $env:TEMP
Import-Module PSReadLine -Verbose
Set-Alias ll Get-ChildItem -Option AllScope
  4. Type & $profile and hit enter. There you go, there’s your first PowerShell $profile.

What happens? What did you expect to happen?

My Profile

My personal PowerShell profile is made with sugar, splice, and everything nice.

admin PowerShell running in an administrative window while working on a git repo

admin PowerShell running in a non-admin window while working in C:\Tmp

This is where I tell you to be sure you’re aware of what you’re downloading from the internet. You can view the source on GitHub and inspect the code prior to downloading/executing anything described in this post. I do eventually plan on making my profile a signed PowerShell module to make it easier to download and distribute.

If you want to just get started with copying my homework run the following command in PowerShell as administrator:

iex ((New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://github.com/tseknet/PowerShell-Profile/raw/master/install.ps1'))

You’ll see verbose messages scrolling by explaining what is currently executing. You should also see a few prompts along the way, such as to allow a new NuGet provider. This is expected.

See fonts below if you see missing characters in your prompt.

What’s Included

Modules

I can’t take all the credit. The following (awesome) modules will be installed by default:

  1. posh-git: Integrates Git and PowerShell by providing Git status summary information
  2. oh-my-posh: Theme engine for PowerShell
  3. Get-ChildItemColor: Provides colorization of outputs of Get-ChildItem Cmdlet of PowerShell
  4. PSWriteHTML: Output PowerShell commands to a formatted HTML page

Fonts

By default, my profile installs Powerline fonts from GitHub to enable custom characters in the console. You may see multiple popups to install fonts. This is expected.

Once the font(s) are installed, you may see multiple missing characters. To fix this, see the instructions below.

The default Powerline font that this theme uses is DejaVu Sans Mono for Powerline. This can be modified in profile.ps1.

Terminal/VSCode

Change your PowerShell font to DejaVu Sans Mono for Powerline in the settings JSON file.

PowerShell Console
  1. Right-click the title bar of the PowerShell console
  2. Select Properties
  3. Select the Font tab
  4. Locate DejaVu Sans Mono for Powerline
  5. Click OK

You should now see your fully customized prompt 🎉

Custom Functions

Here’s a high-level summary of some functions that my profile script provides:

  1. Auto-update: Download the latest profile file from GitHub if necessary
  2. Set the PowerShell Window Title with useful information such as elevation and version
  3. Install and import modules listed above
  4. Overwrite ll / ls / history commands for better results
  5. Download and set my personal oh-my-posh theme module, TsekNet.psm1
  6. Install Powerline fonts using posh-git
  7. Set the default location

  8. Output functions made by the profile to the console

    …and much more!

Troubleshooting

Errors will be shown in the console. Type $Error[0] to see the latest error message if necessary for troubleshooting.

Making it Your Own

As mentioned in the background section, PowerShell profiles are unique. Feel free to fork my profile from GitHub, and modify it to fit your needs.

As an example, you can point the auto-updater function Import-GitRepo to your repository here.

I’ve tried to break out functions that you may want to modify at the bottom of the script, including cmdlets with configurable options.

Conclusion

By leveraging PowerShell profiles, you can make your every day repetitive tasks easier.

Wish you could get the weather at any moment from PowerShell? Make a function, add it to your profile. Wish you could get random comics? Make a function, add it to your profile.

I invite you to open a pull request if you found any issue with my PowerShell profile. Got a cool function you’re using in your profile? Leave a comment below!

Now get out there and make PowerShell do the work for you ✨


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