{"id":74391,"date":"2015-11-09T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2015\/11\/09\/change-display-output-colors-in-powershell-ise\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T09:34:36","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T16:34:36","slug":"change-display-output-colors-in-powershell-ise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/change-display-output-colors-in-powershell-ise\/","title":{"rendered":"Change Display Output Colors in PowerShell ISE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/b>: Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy, talks about changing the output console colors in the Windows PowerShell ISE.<\/span><\/p>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. One of the things I like about using the Write-Host<\/b> cmdlet is that I can change the color of a line that writes to the Windows PowerShell console. But, what if I want to change the entire output console so that the output is really obvious? I can also do that on the fly by using the $host<\/b> object. As shown here, the $host<\/b> object returns a number of properties, and it contains a number of other objects:<\/p>\n

PS C:\\Users\\mredw> $host<\/p>\n

Name             : Windows PowerShell ISE Host<\/p>\n

Version          : 5.0.10240.16384<\/p>\n

InstanceId       : 92ba5361-53ee-4217-82d2-bf54710efcbe<\/p>\n

UI               : System.Management.Automation.Internal.Host.InternalHostUserInterface<\/span><\/p>\n

CurrentCulture   : en-US<\/p>\n

CurrentUICulture : en-US<\/p>\n

PrivateData      : Microsoft.PowerShell.Host.ISE.ISEOptions<\/p>\n

DebuggerEnabled  : True<\/p>\n

IsRunspacePushed : False<\/p>\n

Runspace         : System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.LocalRunspace<\/p>\n

The embedded object I want is the host interface object. It is in the UI property. When I access it, I see that there is a RawUI<\/b> property that contains another object:<\/p>\n

PS C:\\Users\\mredw> $host.UI<\/p>\n

RawUI                                                                 <\/p>\n

—–                                                                  <\/p>\n

System.Management.Automation.Internal.Host.InternalHostRawUserInterface <\/span><\/p>\n

The RawUI<\/b> object is really cool and it contains a number of interesting properties:<\/p>\n

PS C:\\Users\\mredw> $host.UI.RawUI<\/p>\n

ForegroundColor       : White<\/span><\/p>\n

BackgroundColor       : -1<\/p>\n

CursorPosition        : 0,0<\/p>\n

WindowPosition        :<\/p>\n

CursorSize            :<\/p>\n

BufferSize            : 85,0<\/p>\n

WindowSize            :<\/p>\n

MaxWindowSize         :<\/p>\n

MaxPhysicalWindowSize :<\/p>\n

KeyAvailable          :<\/p>\n

WindowTitle           : Windows PowerShell ISE<\/p>\n

If I want to know what the possible enumeration values are for ForegroundColor<\/b>, I can give it a bogus number and look at the returned error message:<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

It tells me that the enumeration is System.ConsoleColor<\/b>, and that the possible values are: Black, DarkBlue, DarkGreen, DarkCyan, DarkRed, DarkMagenta, DarkYellow, Gray, DarkGray, Blue, Green, Cyan, Red, Magenta, Yellow, and White.<\/p>\n

If I count them, that is 16 possible values, and I bet I can go from 0 to 15.<\/p>\n

Armed with this information, I decide to write a little script that will change the foreground color to a different value every second. I create an array of numbers from 0 to 15 by using the range operator:<\/p>\n

0..15.<\/p>\n

Then I read the current foreground color and store it in a variable:<\/p>\n

$color = $Host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor<\/p>\n

Now I use the Foreach-Object<\/b> cmdlet, pipe the numbers across the pipeline, and assign new ForegroundColor<\/b> values:<\/p>\n

Foreach-Object {<\/p>\n

$Host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor = $_<\/p>\n

I print a message that says what the foreground color is, and then I sleep for a second. I continue to loop through the numbers. When I am done, I revert back to the original color. The complete script is shown here:<\/p>\n

Clear-Host<\/p>\n

$color = $Host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor<\/p>\n

0..15 |<\/p>\n

Foreach-Object {<\/p>\n

$Host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor = $_<\/p>\n

“The console color is now $_”<\/p>\n

Start-Sleep 1}<\/p>\n

“Now setting it back to default …”<\/p>\n

$Host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor = $color <\/p>\n

When I run it, the following output appears:<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

That is all there is to using Windows PowerShell to change the ISE output console colors.  Join me tomorrow when I will talk about more cool stuff.<\/p>\n

I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b> <\/span><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy, talks about changing the output console colors in the Windows PowerShell ISE. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. One of the things I like about using the Write-Host cmdlet is that I can change the color of a line that writes to the Windows PowerShell console. But, what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[553,3,45],"class_list":["post-74391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-ise","tag-scripting-guy","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy, talks about changing the output console colors in the Windows PowerShell ISE. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. One of the things I like about using the Write-Host cmdlet is that I can change the color of a line that writes to the Windows PowerShell console. But, what […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}