Get-ChildItemColor

Get-ChildItemColor provides colorization of outputs of Get-ChildItem Cmdlet of PowerShell. It is based on Tim Johnson’s script, another script by the PowerShell Guy, and PSColor.

It provides two main functionalities:

1. Get-ChildItemColor, which adds coloring to the output of Get-ChildItem.
2. Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide, which is colored version of Get-ChildItemColor | Format-Wide. This uses Write-Host to output coloring, because Get-ChildItemColor | Format-Wide does not allow multiple colors in one line.

Get-ChildItemColor has the following features:

• Both functions support pipelines — they are pipeline-aware, so they just return untouhed output of Get-ChildItem when used as a part of a pipeline.
• As of v3.0.0, it no longer overloads Out-Default, and thus does not have unintended consequences.
• Both functions work as intended inside OneDrive directories.

Screenshots

Get-ChildItemColor

Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide (ls equivalent)

Install

• The wiki has additional instructions and examples.

Install from PowerShellGallery

PowerShellGet is required, which is included in Windows 10 and WMF5. If you are using PowerShell V3 or V4, you will need to install PowerShellGet.

Then, you can run Install-Module Get-ChildItemColor.

Install from GitHub

After cloning the repo or downloading the files, you can put files in /src folder into Get-ChildItemColor folder under your PSModulePath (e.g., $ENV:UserProfile\Documents\PowerShell\Modules for PowerShell 6 and later). The master branch always contains the latest release version.

Install from Chocolatey

The module is available as a Chocolatey package. Install it using choco install get-childitemcolor.

Usage

When you import the module:

Import-Module Get-ChildItemColor

it provides two functions, Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide and Get-ChildItemColor.

You can add aliases to these functions for convenience. For example, I have the following in my profile[fn:pathProfile] (please do not put this into ISE profile[fn:pathProfileISE] as it does not work in ISE):

If (-Not (Test-Path Variable:PSise)) {  # Only run this in the console and not in the ISE
    Import-Module Get-ChildItemColor
    
    Set-Alias l Get-ChildItemColor -option AllScope
    Set-Alias ls Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide -option AllScope
}

So l yields colored output of Get-ChildItem and ls yields colored output of Get-ChildItem | Format-Wide equivalent.

Both functions have the following optional switches:

-File

Show only files.

-Directory

Show only directories.

Get-ChildItemColor has the following optional switch:

-HumanReadableSize

Unix style size string (e.g. M instead of MB, K instead of KB etc) (thanks to kforeverisback)

Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide has the following optional switches:

-HideHeader

Supress printing of headers (path on top).

-TrailingSlashDirectory

Add a trailing slash to directory names.

Note that if you want to use these switches as default, you have to define a function. For example,

function Get-ChildItemColorForceWideHHTS {
    	Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide -HideHeader -TrailingSlashDirectory -Force $Args[0]
}

Set-Alias ls Get-ChildItemColorForceWideHHTS -option AllScope

[fn:pathProfile] $Home\[My ]Documents\PowerShell\Profile.ps1 or $Home\[My ]Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Profile.ps1

[fn:pathProfileISE] $Home\[My ]Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShellISE_profile.ps1

Customizing color

One can dynamically change the color scheme for different items, thanks to asidlo’s contribution. See the example below.

# Change color for directories to Blue
$GetChildItemColorTable.File['Directory'] = "Blue"

# Change color for executables to Green
ForEach ($Exe in $GetChildItemColorExtensions['ExecutableList']) {
    $GetChildItemColorTable.File[$Exe] = "Green"
}

Adding a new category

One can create a new category and assign colors easily like the example below.

$GetChildItemColorExtensions['OfficeList'] = @(
    ".docx",
    ".pdf",
    ".pptx",
    ".xlsx"
)

ForEach ($Extension in $GetChildItemColorExtensions['OfficeList']) {
    $GetChildItemColorTable.File.Add($Extension, "Green")
}

Customizing vertical space

You can adjust the vertical spacing using $Global:GetChildItemColorVerticalSpace. Default is 1 (PowerShell’s default is 2).

$Global:GetChildItemColorVerticalSpace = 1

Authors

• Joon Ro.

Changelog

• This section only contains old logs. See Releases for newer changelog.

v2.4.0

• Add HideHeader switch to Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide (#29)

v2.3.0

• Better handling of header printout (#41)

v2.2.2

• Add instructions about adding a new category.

v2.2.1

• Fix uint32 error in cell width calculation. (Thanks to DanielCarmingham)
• Add Chocolatey install instructions. (Thanks to pauby)

v2.2.0

• Fix #27, Display issue with Chinese. (Thanks to shiena)

v2.1.1

• BUGFIX: Print directory names correctly when -Recurse option is used

v2.1.0

• Re-organize folder structure

v2.0.0

• Incorporate PSColor’s implementation of coloring the output of Get-ChildItem.
• Add $Global:GetChildItemColorVerticalSpace option.

v1.3.1

• PR #21: Added ReparsePoint (symlink) detection, matched color scheme with Linux (thanks to cmilanf)
• Make empty lines consistent between Get-ChildItemColor and Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide (Fixes #17)

v1.3.0

• PR #23: Added customizable color output. (thanks to asidlo)
• Improve README

v1.2.3

• Add LICENSE

v1.2.2

• Improve README (#15)
• Beautify code

v1.2.1

• PR #13: Fallback to Gray when no OriginalForegroundColor (thanks to mikesigs)
• PR #12: Fix a typo (thanks to jqly)

v1.2.0

• Robust to non-file entries (Issue #10)

v1.1.0

• Revert back to previous implementation of Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide

v1.0.0

• The script changes $Host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor only and keep the item object intact
• Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide is basically Get-ChildItemColor | Format-Wide

v0.5.3

• Better performance by reducing if’s
• Proper printing of DirectoryEntry for FormatWide case

v0.5.2

• Published on PowerShellGallery
• Refactoring; separate out two functions

v0.4.2

• Make it a PowerShell module

v0.4.1

• Returns vanila Get-Childitem results for DictionaryEntry cases.

v0.4.0

• Make function names consistent to the PowerShell naming convention (#8)
• Use parameters more consistently, -Path works with paths with spaces (#3), and -Force works (#9)