Welcome back, everyone, to the next lesson in my course
on Installing and Running PowerShell.
We're working with PowerShell 7,
which we installed on Windows 10 in the last module.
Now I want to show you how easy it is to run and get started with it.
You can get into a PowerShell session a number of ways.
It's really no different than anything else you install in Windows.
You can launch PowerShell from the Start menu.
Now if you don't have it pinned,
you can easily search for it by starting to type pwsh.
Now personally,
I pin mine to the taskbar so I can easily open it at any time.
Or, from any command prompt or the run box, just type the name
of the executable, pwsh.exe.
What I want to make sure you understand,
though, is that PowerShell itself technically isn't the application.
It's an engine that is hosted inside another application.
Now for most of you, this will be the traditional PowerShell console.
This is an instance of PowerShell running inside the
traditional cmd​.exe window, which, as you'll see later,
is configurable so that you can make it easy to read and use. A newer option is
to use the Windows Terminal app from the Microsoft Store.
This is what I use on a daily basis for working in PowerShell.
This app lets you run multiple shells in a tabbed format. You can even
have tabs open for Windows PowerShell, PowerShell 7, or even an
old‑fashioned DOS prompt, and it's highly customizable.
I think of this as the next generation shell for Windows. Now,
it's certainly not without its own limitations,
but the project is definitely a work in progress and is in active development.
These are the two primary ways most of you will probably work with
PowerShell. And as a reminder, there is no PowerShell 7 version of
the PowerShell ISE. For scripting, you are encouraged to use Visual
Studio Code from Microsoft, which is free. And remember,
you only need to install it where you're going to be
writing scripts. Now I know some people use VS Code as
their PowerShell console as well,
but personally I think VS Code is forward scripting. For day to day
and interactive work, I use one of the console apps, either the
traditional console or Windows Terminal.
In fact, if you're like me, you'll spend a lot of time in PowerShell.
You'll want to configure it to make it easy to use.
I'll show you how to set some basic settings later in the demo,
both for the console and the Windows Terminal.
And once you are in PowerShell, as the name implies, it can act as a shell.
This means that you can navigate it.
If you've ever been in a C prompt in Windows,
you'll have no problem getting around in PowerShell, and I'll show you how easy this is going to be.