Creating ANSI Progress Bars in PowerShell

Let's wrap up our exploration of ANSI alternatives and look at one last item. In the previous article in this series, I shared some code you could use to create spinner-type progress bars using ANSI escape sequences or even emojis.

$monkeys = @(
    [char]::ConvertFromUtf32(0x1f435),
    [char]::ConvertFromUtf32(0x1f648),
    [char]::ConvertFromUtf32(0x1f649),
    [char]::ConvertFromUtf32(0x1f64a)
)1..10 | ForEach-Object {
    $monkeys | ForEach-Object {
        #using ANSI formatting
        Write-Host "e[1Ae[2K$_ e[3;38;5;190mWorking....e[0m"
        Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 250
    }
} -End {
    Write-Host "e[1Ae[2K"
}

You could use this as an alternative to Write-Progress. However, you could also create a custom progress bar solution using PowerShell and ANSI. This will be for special use cases and there's no one-size-fits-all solution. You'll need to take the techniques and concepts and adapt them to your specific needs. Let's dig in.