Using PowerShell with $PSStyle

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Jeffery Hicks

Jeff Hicks is a long-time Microsoft MVP specializing in PowerShell and automation. He creates PowerShell content for Pluralsight and blogs regularly at https://jdhitsolutions.com/blog. Jeff's latest project is a premium content newsletter at jeffhicks.substack.com Follow him on Twitter as @jeffhicks.

Latest posts by Jeffery Hicks (see all)

• Use PowerShell splatting and PSBoundParameters to pass parameters - Wed, Nov 9 2022
• Using PowerShell with $PSStyle - Mon, Jan 24 2022
• Clean up user profiles with PowerShell - Mon, Jun 9 2014

For some time now, we've been able to use ANSI escape sequences in a PowerShell session. You've seen this when tying a command at a console prompt. Commands, parameters, strings, and operators are displayed in color. These colors are defined as PSReadline options.

PSReadline Options

The ANSI sequences begin with an escape, which is [Char]0x1b or [Char]27. In PowerShell 7, we can use `e. The ANSI sequence follows the escape. This entire sequence precedes the string you wish to treat. You typically close the sequence with a reset command, $([char]27)[0m.

Creating an ANSI string

You can also use ANSI to bold or underline.

Underline with ANSI formatting

Not only is this fun, but it can also add value to PowerShell output. To make this easier to use, Microsoft introduced a new feature in PowerShell 7.2 called PSStyle.

$PSStyle

As far as I can see, there are no cmdlets for this feature. Everything you need is wrapped up in a new variable called $PSStyle.

The PSStyle variable

The ANSI values are shown in their rendered colors.

Important

It is very important to note that if you are running PowerShell in Windows Terminal, you will get different interpretations based on your color scheme.

Use these values in place of the actual ANSI sequence.

"`nRunning $($psstyle.Background.Blue)PowerShell$($psstyle.Reset)$($psstyle.Reset) $($psstyle.Foreground.Yellow)v{0}$($psstyle.Reset) on $($psstyle.Foreground.BrightCyan){1}$($psstyle.Reset)." -f $($psversiontable.PSVersion),(Get-CimInstance win32_operatingsystem).caption

I may have gone a bit overboard here, and I think there is a legitimate debate as to whether this is easier than using the actual ANSI sequences. But it works.

A PSStyle formatted string

You might use this to color part of your prompt. Or maybe to add emphasis to a warning message.

$msg = "Could not find part of path: {0}{1}{2}{3}" -f $psstyle.Italic,$psstyle.Background.Cyan,"c:\work",$psstyle.Reset
Write-Warning $msg

In this example, I'm combining styles.

PSStyle formatted warning

Customizing style

The foreground and background color values are read-only. However, the $PSStyle object has a method you can use to set a foreground or background color from a set of RGB values.

"$($PSStyle.Foreground.FromRgb(0,200,100))I am the walrus$($PSStyle.Reset)"

PSStyle RGB

I'm more likely to create and assign the new value to a variable.

$custom = $PSStyle.Foreground.FromRgb(0,200,100)
"$($custom)I am the walrus$($PSStyle.Reset)"

But there's much more to PSStyle.

Format rendering

In PowerShell 7.2, you'll notice that formatted tables have a little style.

Formatted table with style

Where did those green column headings come from?

PSStyle formatting

You can modify these values instead of changing values in $host.privatedata, as we did in previous versions of PowerShell. I'll change the error color.

$PSStyle.Formatting.Error = "`e[38;5;201m"

PSStyle error format

You'll notice that the error message is displayed in red, which is the value in $host.privatedata. However, when I look at the error with Get-Error, the formatted result uses my new PSStyle setting.

Here's a change to warnings.

PSStyle warning format

Or change the table headers.

$psstyle.Formatting.TableHeader = "`e[3;38;5;195m"

Custom PSStyle table header

If you want to revert to plain-text tables, you can change the rendering setting.

$psstyle.OutputRendering = "Plaintext"

However, this will disable all ANSI-related settings. To change it back, set the value to "ANSI".

Be aware that any changes to $PSStyle are not persistent unless you add them to your PowerShell profile script.

By the way, if you are wondering where I got the ANSI sequences, I used the Show-ANSISequence command from the PSScriptTools module, which you can install from the PowerShell Gallery.

Progress style

One of the big changes in PowerShell 7.2 is how progress bars are displayed. The new format is more Linux-like and command line-friendly. It also doesn't add as much overhead as the previous progress displays. Settings for the new progress style are configured here.

PSStyle progress settings

Now, when you run a command that uses Write-Progress, you'll get something like this.

PSStyle ProgressBar

The command above is also from the PSScriptTools module.

If you need or prefer the legacy look, you can easily set that.

$psstyle.Progress.view = "Classic"

Use a value of 'Minimal' for the new style. Or feel free to adjust the color.

$psstyle.Progress.Style = "`e[38;5;123m"

Here's some silly sample code to see this in action.

1..100 | ForEach-Object -Begin {$i= 0} -process { 
    $i++
    $p = ($i/100)*100
    Write-progress -Activity "Demo" -CurrentOperation "Processing $_" -Status "Square = $($_*$_)" -PercentComplete $p
    Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 100
}

Custom PSStyle ProgressBar

One potential drawback of this new style is that it appears that the CurrentOperation line is left out.

File Info

I've saved the best part for last. You can use $PSStyle to format directory listings.

Default PSStyle FileInfo settings

However, if you do a directory listing, you probably won't recognize any difference. To take advantage of this feature, you need to enable an experimental feature.

Enable-ExperimentalFeature PSANSIRenderingFileInfo

You'll see a message about restarting PowerShell. Unlike changes to values in $PSStyle, this change is persistent until you disable the feature. But look at the difference.

ANSI file output

It might be hard to detect the color of PS1 files. No problem. I can change that.

$psstyle.FileInfo.Extension[".ps1"] = "`e[38;5;123m"

Custom ANSI FileInfo

You can't change what Windows detects as an executable here, but you can add a file extension.

$PSStyle.FileInfo.Extension.add(".xml","`e[38;5;190m")

Custom file formatting

It isn't that difficult to define a style for a group of file extensions.

$ext =".gif",".bmp",".png",".jpg",".jpeg"
foreach ($e in $ext) {
    $PSStyle.FileInfo.Extension.add($e,"`e[38;5;111m")
}

Since I've been having so much fun with this, I realized I needed a good way to configure my FileInfo settings without having to constantly be editing a profile script. I wrote a set of PowerShell functions, one to export FileInfo settings to a JSON file and another to import them. You can find the functions online here. Save the PS1 file to your desktop, and dot source it.

Once you've configured your FileInfo settings, export them to a JSON file.

Export-PSStyleFileInfo C:\work\fileinfo.json

In your PowerShell profile script, dot source the PS1 file and then import the settings.

Import-PSStyleFileInfo c:\work\fileinfo.json

Summary

I'm very excited to see how I can incorporate PSStyle into my everyday PowerShell work and scripting. Remember, this requires PowerShell 7.2, so if you haven't updated, this might be a good reason to do so. And if you find a great use case for these settings, I'd love to hear about it.