How I customize my PowerShell

published on 9th april, 2023
open How I customize my PowerShell

Everytime when I use Windows, The biggest thing I missed is ZSH with Oh My Zsh. I tried to use PowerShell or CMD, but it’s not as good as ZSH.

So I decided to make it better and feel like I’m using ZSH.

What do I need from a terminal?

These are all the capabilities I need from a terminal:

Let’s get started

Chocolatey (optional)

Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows. Like Homebrew for macOS or apt for Debian based distros.

This is optional but it will help installing software from terminal easily. You can follow their documentation to install it.

PowerShell 7

First, we need to install PowerShell 7. I’m going to download it from their website. Or you can install it using Chocolatey.

choco install powershell-core

We don’t use Windows PowerShell (The pre-installed one) because it doesn’t support some features we need.

For who confused what’s difference between Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core 7, you can check out this YouTube video.

Nerd Fonts

Nerd Fonts is a font that supports icons. We need this font to make our terminal look better. Choose your favorite font from their website. I choose JetBrainsMono Nerd Font and I’m going to install it using Chocolatey.

choco install jetbrainsmononf

Windows Terminal

Windows Terminal is a terminal emulator for Windows. I’m going to install from Microsoft Store. But you can also install it using Chocolatey.

choco install microsoft-windows-terminal

Open Windows terminal and then set default profile to PowerShell 7:

  1. Settings (That down arrow in the top bar)
  2. Set Default Profile as “PowerShell” (the black icon, not the blue Windows PowerShell one)

Also don’t forget to set the fonts:

  1. Settings
  2. Profiles (left menu)
  3. PowerShell (or Defaults if you want to change globally)
  4. Appearance
  5. Font face
  6. Select the installed Nerd font, I choose JetBrainsMono NF

open Windows Terminal font

You can change the color scheme too.

Oh My Posh

Oh My Posh is a theme engine for PowerShell. It’s like Oh My Zsh for ZSH. You can follow their installation guide to install it. But I’m going install it using Chocolatey.

choco install oh-my-posh

After installing, we need to create PowerShell profile. The PowerShell profile is same as .zshrc or .bashrc. You can provide initial commands, aliases, etc.

You can create it by running this command:

New-Item -Path $PROFILE -ItemType File -Force

The file should be located at this following path:

~\Documents\PowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

Open the profile using your text editor.

# Open in VS Code
code $PROFILE

# Or open in Notepad
notepad $PROFILE

And set Oh My Posh as the default shell. Put this inside the profile file so that every time you open the terminal, it loads Oh My Posh.

oh-my-posh init pwsh | Invoke-Expression

To set custom theme, you need to change the --config option of the oh-my-posh init command. For example:

# Load amro theme
oh-my-posh init --config amro pwsh | Invoke-Expression

# Load from file
oh-my-posh init pwsh --config 'C:/Users/Someone/jandedobbeleer.omp.json' | Invoke-Expression

# Load from URL
oh-my-posh init pwsh --config 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh/main/themes/jandedobbeleer.omp.json' | Invoke-Expression

You can find more themes on theme documentation. Or learn more about customizing Oh My Posh on customize documentation.

open Modified montys theme

You can download my modified version of montys theme from this gist. Or import from URL directly:

oh-my-posh init pwsh --config 'https://gist.github.com/Podter/59f8874dcec39b706fd46ad1049daf2f/raw/7cfe4e98eb81ecf80519f8de0a9ae4c1f9483025/montys.omp.json' | Invoke-Expression

lsd

open lsd tree

lsd is a ls command with colors and icons. You can follow the installation guide on their GitHub readme. I’m going to compile manually but you can install it using Chocolatey.

choco install lsd

And then replace the PowerShell’s default ls command with lsd:

Set-Alias ls lsd

You can also add some aliases for ls command:

function l { lsd -l $args }
function la { lsd -a $args }
function lla { lsd -la $args }
function lt { lsd --tree $args }

These will add l, la, lla, and lt aliases for ls command.

gsudo

gsudo is a sudo command for Windows. This will allow us to run commands with elevated privileges. It’s like sudo for Linux. You can the follow the installation guide on their documentation. I’m going to install it using Chocolatey.

choco install gsudo

And sudo command should be available now.

# Run PowerShell as Administrator
sudo pwsh

rm -rf

When I use Linux machine, I always use rm -rf command to delete files and alias rm to it. But in Windows, we need to use Remove-Item command. So I create an alias for it.

Remove-Alias -Name rm # Remove default rm command
function rm { Remove-Item -Recurse -Force $args } # Create new rm command

Autocompletion

open Autocompletion

Put the following lines in your profile file and you are done.

Set-PSReadlineKeyHandler -Key Tab -Function MenuComplete
Set-PSReadlineKeyHandler -Key UpArrow -Function HistorySearchBackward
Set-PSReadlineKeyHandler -Key DownArrow -Function HistorySearchForward

Alias

You can add some aliases to your profile file. For example:

# Alias `g` to `git`
Set-Alias g git;

Conclusion

That’s it. You can now use PowerShell as your daily driver. I hope this guide helps you to make your terminal look better.

open Terminal Operating System GIF