PowerShell tiPS Module

With PowerShell, you can truly learn something new every day if you want. There are tons of great modules, tips, and tricks that we can use. But how do you find them? This is where the new module, PowerShell tIPS comes in.

tiPS will show a PowerShell-related tip every time you open PowerShell, just like some software programs or even games do on their loading screens. This provides a really low-effort way to learn new things about PowerShell.

The module is community-driven, meaning that everybody can contribute by sharing helpful and valuable tips.

Instal and Configure tiPS

To install the module, we can simply use the Install-Module cmdlet to install it from the PowerShell Gallery. I recommend installing it in the current user scope so that the module is only available in your user account.

# Install the module
Install-Module -Name tiPS -Scope CurrentUser

The next step is to add the module to your PowerShell profile. You can do this manually, but it is even easier to use the cmdlet below to add it automatically for you:

# Add the module to your PowerShell profile
Add-TiPSImportToPowerShellProfile

At this point, the module is installed and automatically loaded when you open PowerShell. But it won’t show tips yet. To do this, we will need to configure when we want to see the actual tips. We have a few options for this:

• EverySessions
• Daily
• Weekly
• Never

To start, I recommend using Daily. If you have seen most of the tips, you can always switch back to weekly. You can set the configuration with:

Set-TiPSConfiguration -AutomaticallyWritePowerShellTip Daily

The last step is to configure how often you want to update the module. Regularly updating the module is needed to get new tips. You can see it to update Daily, Weekly, BiWeekly, monthly, or never.

Set-TiPSConfiguration -AutomaticallyUpdateModule Weekly

Using the Module

The PowerShell tips will automatically show up after you open a PowerShell window. But you can of course also request a tip when you want. Simply use the cmdlet Write-PowerShellTip or it’s alias tips to view a tip.

You can also use the cmdlet Get-PowerShellTip, this will return the tip as an object. This way you can pipe the tip into another cmdlet if you want.

The newest tips are shown first by default. But we can also change this. We can set it to view the oldest tips first or display them in a random order:

Set-TiPSConfiguration -TipRetrievalOrder

To view your current configuration, you can use the cmdlet Get-TiPSConfiguration.

Wrapping Up

The PowerShell tiPS module is community-driven, so if you have a great tip or trick to share, then make sure that you check out the contribute section here at the Github repository.

I personally find the tiPS module a great initiative, it’s an easy way to learn new PowerShell tips. Make sure that you also check out the 5 Must have PowerShell modules and of course the free PowerShell Cheat Sheet!