Talk to your PC in words: PowerShell for beginners

Two products, one name: which PowerShell you have

A shell is the program that runs your commands and shows the result, much as you might talk to the waiter rather than point at the menu. Microsoft makes two separate products with almost the same name.

Windows PowerShell ships inside Windows. Its latest version, 5.1, arrived in August 2016 with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. It gets no new features, and its support is tied to your version of Windows.

PowerShell 7 is the one you install yourself. It works on Windows, macOS and Linux, and its program is called pwsh. As of November 2026, Microsoft’s lifecycle page lists 7.6 as the long-term support release, supported until 14 November 2028.

You need not choose yet: every command on this page works in the copy already on your PC.

PowerShell or CMD? · What is a terminal?

Opening it, with no admin rights

Open the Start menu, type Windows PowerShell, select it, then choose Open. The line where the cursor waits, such as PS C:\Users\you>, is the prompt: PS marks PowerShell, then comes the folder you are standing in, and your command goes after the >.

Skip Run as administrator. Nothing on this page needs it, and less power means smaller slips. Leave the execution policy alone too, whatever some tutorials say. For Windows PowerShell 5.1, Microsoft says the default on Windows client computers, Restricted, still permits individual commands and blocks only script files.

Reading Verb-Noun names

PowerShell’s own commands are called cmdlets (“command-lets”), and each name is a verb, a dash and a singular noun. Microsoft says the verb identifies the action and the noun the thing acted on. The verb is a warning light as well: Get retrieves, Remove deletes. On a real PC, Get-Verb lists every approved verb.

A child item is anything inside a folder, the way a drawer can hold things and smaller drawers. These five come first:

Aliases: the short names

Aliases are nicknames that run a cmdlet. Microsoft added familiar ones for people who know Command Prompt or Unix, so on Windows both dir and ls run Get-ChildItem. Those aliases are Windows-specific: in PowerShell 7 on macOS or Linux, ls is not an alias, so the computer’s own ls program runs instead of Get-ChildItem.

Get-Alias ls reveals the cmdlet behind a nickname, in the box above and on a real PC. Use aliases at the prompt but full names in scripts: Microsoft says aliases make code harder to read.

Lesson 19: Dialects: PowerShell, CMD, Mac

Getting help from the shell itself

Nobody memorises every command. Microsoft’s PowerShell 101 book calls Get-Help, Get-Command and Get-Member the three core cmdlets. Four moves answer most questions:

• help copy shows the help for Copy-Item a page at a time: Space for the next page, Q to quit.
• On a real PC, Get-Command -Noun Item lists commands whose noun is Item, such as Copy-Item and Remove-Item.
• help Copy-Item -Online opens the newest version in your browser. Windows PowerShell 5.1 ships without its full help files, and Microsoft says downloading them in 5.1 needs an administrator window, so read online.
• -WhatIf makes a command describe a change instead of making it. After rm notes.txt -WhatIf, the file is still there.

Lesson 18: Commands have parts · PowerShell cheat sheet

Safe habits from your first day

• Run pwd and dir before changing anything. A path is a home address, and one wrong letter means the wrong house.
• Rehearse risky commands with -WhatIf first.
• Treat delete as final. Remove-Item, rm and del skip the Recycle Bin, so copy precious files first.
• Never paste a command you cannot explain, whether it came from a forum, a video or an AI chat. It runs as you, on your files.
• Leave admin windows, system settings and the execution policy alone while you learn.
• Press Ctrl+C to stop a command that keeps running.

Lesson 17: Delete carefully · Lesson 21: Stop signs

Next steps: Levels 2 and 3

Level 2 of the free DayOneCode course practises pwd, dir and ls, cd, making, writing and reading files, and the Tab and arrow tricks. Level 3 adds copy, move, rename, careful deletes, aliases, error messages and stop signs, all in a pretend PowerShell with no account.

Shaky on paths? Start at Paths: every file has an address. For speed, play Command Racer.

See all ten levels · Open the practice terminal