Q: Wait a minute! Don’t I already have PowerShell?
A: Yes. However you may want to continue reading because things are never as simple as they appear.
The PowerShell version you have installed on Windows 10 is 5.X, Microsoft even says so in their own documentation.
On the initial release of Windows 10, with automatic updates enabled, PowerShell gets updated from version 5.0 to 5.1. If the original version of Windows 10 is not updated through Windows Updates, the version of PowerShell is 5.0.1
The PowerShell version you will use on any other platform however is PowerShell 7.X,
containing many amazing new features2 like the || pipeline operator, pipeline parallelization ForEach-Object -Parallel and many more.
Want to get all those amazing features? It’s as easy as installing a package:
- Go to the latest release on GitHub and download the
.msifor your architecture - Run the downloaded installer and follow on screen instructions or use this command to install with all default options:
msiexec.exe /package DOWNLOADED-PACKAGE.msi /quiet ADD_EXPLORER_CONTEXT_MENU_OPENPOWERSHELL=1 ENABLE_PSREMOTING=1 REGISTER_MANIFEST=1
Depending on your Windows version you may alternatively be able to install PowerShell 7.X from the Microsoft Store. There are benefits like automatic updates to this installation method, however there are also drawbacks like running in the application sandbox.
For now I would not recommend this installation method, please consult the official documentation3 for more details.
Either way you are now able to use PowerShell 7.x by launching it from the start menu or running pwsh inside any open PowerShell 5 window.
Info
It is important to note that this did not change the PowerShell version started when running powershell.exe.
Even though it would technically be possible to change this,
I strongly advise against it as many Windows and 3rd party tools will not work as intended any more!
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Docs: What’s New In PowerShell 7.0 & PowerShell 7.1 ↩︎