Customizing your PowerShell Profile

For frequent PowerShell users, the standard settings might not be ideal. We can change the settings
of our PowerShell window to how we like it by modifying the profile.
The first thing we need to check is whether or not a profile already exists. We can do this by opening
a PowerShell window and typing:
Test-Path $profile

Since our query returned False we are going to have to create a new profile. Well type the
following in our PowerShell prompt:
New-Item -path $profile -type file force

You should get the following pop-up, and just click yes to proceed.

The profile script will now be created. It will be in the location following the Directory: output.
When we browse to that location, the profile script will be there waiting for us to modify. Open the
file named Microsoft.Powershell_profile.ps1

The profile will be empty, so we can fill it with any commands that we want to run. You can set the
starting prompt location to the root directory by adding:
set-location c:
We can change the title of the PowerShell window to SysadminGeek by adding:
$Shell.WindowTitle=SysadminGeek

We can also change the window size and scrollback with the following:
$Shell = $Host.UI.RawUI
$size = $Shell.WindowSize
$size.width=70
$size.height=25
$Shell.WindowSize = $size
$size = $Shell.BufferSize
$size.width=70
$size.height=5000
$Shell.BufferSize = $size
The background and text coloring can also be changed with these entries:
$shell.BackgroundColor = Gray
$shell.ForegroundColor = Black
You can put any scripts or aliases that you commonly use as well. Weve included our alias for
Notepad.exe
new-item alias:np -value C:WindowsSystem32notepad.exe
The final entry is included to clear everything from the PowerShell window, giving you a clean
workspace:
Clear-Host
All together, it looks like this:

After youve saved your profile, the next time you open PowerShell you will see all the changes
made to your profile.

Its pretty easy to customize your profile, and the more you use PowerShell, the more you will find
yourself returning to add in new aliases and scripts that you need to run at startup.