Installing the Latest PowerShell on Windows 11

{/* When opening the PowerShell command line in Windows 11, you may encounter an error saying “Install the latest PowerShell for new features and improvements! https://aka.ms/PSWindows”. This is caused by an outdated version of PowerShell being installed. This article explains how to install, apply, and configure a new version of PowerShell. */} When opening the PowerShell command line in Windows 11, you may encounter an error saying Install the latest PowerShell for new features and improvements! https://aka.ms/PSWindows. This is caused by an outdated version of PowerShell being installed. This article explains how to install, apply, and configure a new version of PowerShell.

When starting PowerShell, you may see an error/warning message like the following:

"Install the latest PowerShell for new features and improvements! https://aka.ms/PSWindows"

To check the currently installed PowerShell version, use the following command. In my environment, I can confirm that version 5.1 is installed.

> Get-Host | Select-Object Version

Version
-------
5.1.22000.65

There are several ways to install the latest version of PowerShell. One is to install the PowerShell-7.1.5-win-x64.msi executable file and install from this file.

Installing PowerShell on Windows - PowerShell | Microsoft Docs

Another method is to install using the winget command on the PowerShell command line. We’ll proceed with this easiest and most available method.

You can list available packages with the winget search command. Please run the following commands in PowerShell with administrator privileges. To open PowerShell with administrator privileges, right-click the PowerShell icon in the taskbar, right-click again, and select “Run as administrator”.

> winget search Microsoft.PowerShell
Name               Id                           Version  Source
----------------------------------------------------------------
PowerShell         Microsoft.PowerShell         7.1.5.0  winget
PowerShell Preview Microsoft.PowerShell.Preview 7.2.0.10 winget

In this case, we’ll install the regular Microsoft.PowerShell version, not the beta preview version. Start the installation with the following command.

> winget install --id Microsoft.Powershell --source winget

The installation proceeds.

The installation completes in a few minutes.

> winget install --id Microsoft.Powershell --source winget
Found PowerShell [Microsoft.PowerShell] Version 7.1.5.0
This application is licensed to you by its owner.
Microsoft is not responsible for, nor does it grant any licenses to, third-party packages.
Downloading https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/download/v7.1.5/PowerShell-7.1.5-win-x64.msi
  ██████████████████████████████  94.9 MB / 94.9 MB
Successfully verified installer hash
Starting package install...
Successfully installed

To launch PowerShell 7, press the Windows key, search, and launch.