1. Introduction

By default, Windows Powershell does not look great compared to Linux terminals. Also, Git does not play nice with Windows Powershell. It does not provide Tab auto complete features.

Therefore users have to manually type all the long Git commands. Furthermore, we need to type git staus command everytime we need the current status of a repository, such as the number of modified files or the current working branch name.

However, we can add modules to Powershell in order to have auto complete Git commands feature and nice looking terminals. I will discuss about adding the modules and customizing Powershell from now on. The following instructions will describe how and what I applied to suit my needs. You can pick what you want to apply to your Powershell.

2. Instructions

1. Prerequisites

Git
A Powerline support font

A powerline font needs to be installed since powerline uses its specific fonts, which appear to be colored separator arrows between segements. Without one, terminals will have broken squares all over the prompts like below.

Also, According to oh-my-posh documentation, it was designed to use Nerd fonts which contain extensive glyphs which are not included in non-Nerd fonts (standard fonts) like the image below. Install one otherwise you would see crashed square fonts. However you can use minimal themes if you do not want to install Nerd fonts. I will explain it later in this post.

2. Install Modules

Execute Powershell, and type the following command.

Install-Module posh-git -Scope CurrentUser

And to install oh-my-posh, use Window's apt-like package manager winget.

winget install JanDeDobbeleer.OhMyPosh

Or go to their webpage to see other installation methods.
They have deprecated installing oh-my-posh with Install-Module Powershell command as with the Powershell wrapper module.

That will install two modules.
posh-git is a module which shows the current working branch and status, and provides Git auto complete features.
oh-my-posh provides powerline theme features on Powershell prompts.

3. Edit Powershell Profile

Installing modules does not load the modules automatically.
Therefore we need to edit the profile file of Powershell which is executed when Powershell starts to run.
The profile file can be accessed via an environment variable $PROFILE within Powershell.

notepad $PROFILE

The above command opens the file in notepad.
Inside the editor, we need to import the modules.

Import-Module posh-git
Import-Module oh-my-posh

You can pick a theme from the theme list and load it with Set-PoshPrompt command. Execute the following command to get the list of themes installed on your machine:

Get-PoshThemes

If you do not want to install Nerd fonts, you may use themes with minimal suffix since minimal themes do not need nerd glyphs.

Also, if you have a problem with readability due to colors such as Grey colored tokens are hard to read on black background, you can set the color of specific tokens with Set-PSReadLineOption command.
The below shows my $PROFILE configurations.

{% highlight powershell linenos %} Import-Module posh-git Import-Module oh-my-posh Set-PoshPrompt -Theme hotstick.minimal Set-PSReadlineOption -Colors @{operator = "Red"} Set-PSReadlineOption -Colors @{type = "Red"} Set-PSReadLineOption -Colors @{Parameter = "Red"} {% endhighlight %}

4. ⚠️ Powershell Module Deprecated!

oh-my-posh Powershell module has been deprecated as of 05/21/2022!
But don't worry, the deprecation is not about the whole application, but the Powershell module.

They say the Powershell module is just a wrapper around an executable, and we can migrate to another installation method following their instructions. link

Put simply, if you have installed oh-my-posh using Install-Module command as I had stated above, then

uninstall the module,
delete Import-Module oh-my-posh line from your $PROFILE,
Install oh-my-posh in different way, such as winget,
And call oh-my-posh command from your $PROFILE to set posh prompt if you need.
I use
oh-my-posh init pwsh --config "$env:POSH_THEMES_PATH\hotstick.minimal.omp.json" | Invoke-Expression
to decorate as hotstick.minimal theme.