Announcing the release of Get-WhatsNew

Jason Helmick

We are pleased to announce the release of Get-WhatsNew, a cmdlet that delivers feature information about new versions of PowerShell to your local terminal experience.

Stay informed with Get-WhatsNew

Between General Availability (GA), Long-Term Servicing (LTS), and Previews release, PowerShell ships updates several times a year. At this pace, PowerShell users may become unaware of new features and changes that improve automation, performance and security. Today, this information is provided through release notes and the PowerShell GitHub repository. Get-WhatsNew enables you to:

• Learn about new features that enable new solutions
• Get version-specific information to make upgrade decisions
• View the information in disconnected scenarios (data ships with module)
• View the information in Windows PowerShell 5.1 and higher
• Get information for a single random feature for a message-of-the-day (MOTD) experience
• Quickly open the release notes on the web version using the Online option

Installing WhatsNew

The Get-WhatsNew cmdlet ships in the Microsoft.PowerShell.WhatsNew module, which can be installed from the PowerShell Gallery.

Requirements:

• Microsoft.PowerShell.WhatsNew is a cross platform module that requires Windows PowerShell 5.1 or higher

To install Microsoft.PowerShell.WhatsNew:

Install-Module -Name Microsoft.PowerShell.WhatsNew

To install Microsoft.PowerShell.WhatsNew using the new PowerShellGet.v3

Install-PSResource -Name Microsoft.PowerShell.WhatsNew

Using Get-WhatsNew

Get-WhatsNew displays PowerShell features by version. The cmdlet includes complete help with several examples. Here are some highlights to get started:

To get the complete help information for Get-WhatsNew

Get-Help Get-WhatsNew -Full

To display the release notes for the version of PowerShell in which the cmdlet is running.

Get-WhatsNew

To display the release notes for PowerShell 7.2 regardless of which version the cmdlet is running.

Get-WhatsNew -Version 7.2

To display one randomly selected section of the release notes per version of PowerShell selected. Add this to your profile to receive a Message-Of-The-Day (motd).

Get-WhatsNew -Daily -Version 6.0, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2

Future plans

We value your ideas and feedback and hope you will give WhatsNew a try. Stop by our GitHub repository and let us know of any issues you find or features you would like added.

Jason Helmick PROGRAM MANAGER 2, Control Plane-JWINTER-OPEX-1010

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