I switched years ago to VSCode as my primary PowerShell development tool. I’m sure many of my readers have also made the switch. But I recognize many people still rely on the Windows PowerShell ISE. Often, these people work in organizations that are slow to move to PowerShell 7. Or they are comfortable with the ISE and have no reason to move to something else. I’ll admit there are times I jump into the PowerShell ISE occasionally.

One thing I always loved about the PowerShell ISE is how it can be automated. Once you understand how the ISE works under the hood, you can create shortcuts and hacks to make scripting more efficient and maybe even a little fun. I can’t show you how to make the ISE have the same feature set as VSCode, but I can show you a few things that will make working in the ISE easier.

Of course, the first thing you need to get comfortable with is the ISE snippets feature. Press Ctrl+J to insert a snippet.