PowerShell Command History

PowerShell maintains a history of the commands you execute, but how to store and retrieve this history depends on the version and execution context.

Session History (Current session)

View Command History

Get-History

Rerun a Command History

Invoke-History <ID>

Clear the Session History

Clear-History

---

Persistent History(Across Sessions)

starting from PowerShell 5.0, command history is saved persistently in a text file

Default Location of Persistent history

Windows:

$env:APPDATA\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\PSReadLine\ConsoleHost_history.txt

Linux/MacOS:

~/.local/share/powershell/PSReadLine/ConsoleHost_history.txt

view last 50 commands from Persistent History

Get-Content (Get-PSReadLineOption).HistorySavePath -Tail 50

---

Filtering and Searching History

Search History for a Keyword

Get-History | Where-Object CommandLine -Match "keyword"

Retrieve the last 10 command

Get-History -Count 10

Interactive Reverse Search

press Ctrl + R to interactively search through command history, similar to bash

---

Deleting History

Remove specific comnmands from session History

Remove-History <ID>

Clear Persistent History

Remove-Item (Get-PSReadLineOption).HistorySavePath

---