In PowerShell, the profile script is used to customize the shell environment and define functions, aliases, and variables. The profile is a PowerShell script file that is executed when you start a PowerShell session, whether it’s an interactive session or a script execution.
There are different profile scripts, in different locations, for the current user and all users on the system. PowerShell runs the profile scripts in the following order.
- All Users, All Hosts
- All Users, Current Host
- Current User, All Hosts
- Current user, Current Host
Use the following command to see the list of profiles scripts and locations.
$profile | Select-Object *
On Windows:
AllUsersAllHosts : C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7-preview\profile.ps1
AllUsersCurrentHost : C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7-preview\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
CurrentUserAllHosts : C:\Users\sewhee\Documents\PowerShell\profile.ps1
CurrentUserCurrentHost : C:\Users\sewhee\Documents\PowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
Length : 69
On Linux:
AllUsersAllHosts : /opt/microsoft/powershell/7/profile.ps1
AllUsersCurrentHost : /opt/microsoft/powershell/7/Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
CurrentUserAllHosts : /home/sdwheeler/.config/powershell/profile.ps1
CurrentUserCurrentHost : /home/sdwheeler/.config/powershell/Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
Length : 67
PowerShell doesn’t load profiles from remote sessions. If you are in a remote interactive session you can dot-source the profile script to load it.
. $profile
For more information, see about_Profiles.