PowerShell Profile and Environment Setup

Your PowerShell profile is the script that runs every time a session starts. Keeping it in a gist means a new machine is one download away from feeling like your own.

Open PowerShell as administrator

powershell -Command "Start-Process PowerShell -Verb RunAs"

Persistent environment variables

$env:NAME = 'value' only lives as long as the session. To make a variable survive a restart, write it to the user’s environment block.

function Set-EnvVar {
  param($EnvName, $EnvValue)
  [System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable($EnvName, $EnvValue, [System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::User)
  $env:$EnvName = $EnvValue   # also set it for the session you are in
  Write-Host "Set $EnvName"
}

Set-EnvVar 'PSGIST' '<your-gist-id>'

Read it back with $env:PSGIST. The User target writes to the current account; use Machine for all users, which needs an elevated session.

Where the profile lives

$PROFILE                  # full path to the current host's profile
$PROFILE | Select-Object *  # every profile path PowerShell knows about
Split-Path $PROFILE | Set-Location

If the file does not exist yet, create it along with any missing folders.

if (-not (Test-Path $PROFILE)) {
  New-Item -ItemType File -Path $PROFILE -Force
}

Pull the profile from a gist

Keep the canonical profile in a gist, store its id in an environment variable, and fetch it on a new machine.

function Get-GitProfile {
  $gitUser = 'bamr87'
  $masterProfile = 'Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1'
  $url = "https://gist.githubusercontent.com/$gitUser/$env:PSGIST/raw/$masterProfile"
  Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url -OutFile $PROFILE
  Write-Host "Profile written to $PROFILE"
}

Invoke-WebRequest replaces the older New-Object System.Net.WebClient pattern and reports failures as terminating errors you can catch.

Reload after editing

. $PROFILE          # re-run the profile in the current session

A full restart is sometimes cleaner, especially after changing environment variables.

function Restart-Powershell {
  Start-Process powershell
  exit
}

Execution policy

A downloaded profile will not run under the default policy on Windows. Allow local scripts while still requiring signatures on remote ones.

Get-ExecutionPolicy -List
Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

See also

• PowerShell cheatsheet — the broader command reference
• Terminal shortcuts — keyboard movement that works in most shells