Easy method to Check your PowerShell Version

Are you using version 5.1 or are you already switched to PowerShell version 7? The PowerShell version that you have installed determines the cmdlets and features that you can use. But how do you know which version you have installed? Well, with a single PowerShell command.

The PowerShell version that you are using determines which cmdlets and features you can use. Scripts design for PowerShell version 5 might not work as expected in 7. So it’s important to know which version you are using.

In this article, we are going to take a look at how to find the version quickly with a single command, how you can extra the version number to use inside your script, and check the version on a remote machine.

Check PowerShell Version

We can find the version that you are using with the help of a PowerShell system variable. With a single command, we can find the exact version number:

If you want a more user-friendly layout then you can also use $host.Version cmdlet:

$host.Version

Sometimes you need to check the installed version in a script to know which cmdlets you can use. For this you can even filter the output more with:

$Host.Version.Major

There are also a couple of other commands that you can use to get the version number. But a commonly used alternative is the $PsVersionTable host variable. This variable is recommended everywhere on the internet, but I always forget it. ($host is easier to remember 😉 )

$PSVersionTable.PSVersion

# Output
Major  Minor  Build  Revision
-----  -----  -----  --------
5      1      19041  1237

Get PowerShell Version from Remote Host

Before you can run a script on a remote computer you sometimes first need to check which version is installed. Some servers may still have only version 2 or 3 installed, which may limit the cmdlets that you can use on your script.

Invoke-Command -Computername lazy-lab11 -Scriptblock {$PSVersionTable.PSVersion}

Updating your PowerShell

PowerShell is a built-in tool in Windows, which means that it is updated with the Windows Updates. In Windows 10 and Windows 11, you get PowerShell 5.1 by default. To update to PowerShell 7 you will need to use an install package.

At the moment of writing, is PowerShell 7.2 the latest version. You can find all possible installer options here at Microsoft. Simply download the latest MSI file to install it on your computer.

Wrapping Up

There is not much more to explain when it comes to looking up the version of PowerShell. If you would like to know how to update PowerShell, then make sure you read this article.

I hope you found this article useful, if you have any questions just drop a comment below.