UC Unleashed

I really like the Preview Pane in Windows Explorer. It saves me from having to open files in their default app. The problem is that PowerShell files are not visible in Windows Explorer by default. And if you’re like me, you probably often look for code snippets in your .ps1 files. That’s pretty easy to fix, however, with a single line entered in an elevated PowerShell session utilizing the Set-ItemProperty cmdlet:

Set-ItemProperty Registry::HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ps1 -Name PerceivedType -Value text

What this does is tell Windows Explorer to treat .ps1 files as text.

What I’ve done is add that in my PowerShell profile. My PowerShell profile is stored on OneDrive, and every machine I have references that same profile file. So, no matter what machine I’m on, I get the same experience, including the preview of PowerShell files. However, you must run it in an elevated session. So in my profile, to prevent errors, I check to see if the session is elevated, and if it is, set the property. It’s easy with:

if ((New-Object Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal $([Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent())).IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltinRole]::Administrator)) {
  Set-ItemProperty Registry::HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ps1 -Name PerceivedType -Value text
}

Now some of you will quickly note that only .ps1 files are included in my example. But PowerShell can also include .psm1 and .psd1 files as well. Can we still accomplish handing all three extensions in a single line of code? Absolutely. We can use Get-Item with the Include parameter to retrieve info for all three extensions, and then pipe that to Set-ItemProperty. Here’s an example:

Get-Item Registry::HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\* -Include .ps1,.psd1,.psm1 | Set-ItemProperty -Name PerceivedType -Value text

And of course we can wrap this with the previously mentioned elevated check:

if ((New-Object Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal $([Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent())).IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltinRole]::Administrator)) {
  Get-Item Registry::HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\* -Include .ps1,.psd1,.psm1 | Set-ItemProperty -Name PerceivedType -Value text
}

I’ll be writing about more things in my PowerShell profile in the coming weeks. I welcome comments and suggestions, including things you include in your profile to help your productivity.