Script To Download the Current Version of PowerShell

One of the annoying things about well, any software is checking to see if you have the currrent version. This is a thing with PowerShell, and because the PowerShell team in its finite wisdom has decided to not just have a "latest stable/lts/preview" url, we have to figure this out manually. It's not too bad though, fortunately, the PowerShell team gives us…

https://bynkiidotcom.wordpress.com/2025/11/11/script-to-download-the-current-version-of-powershell/

#PowershellMac
#powershellmacos
#powershell

Script To Download the Current Version of PowerShell

One of the annoying things about well, any software is checking to see if you have the currrent version. This is a thing with PowerShell, and because the PowerShell team in its finite wisdom has decided to not just have a “latest stable/lts/preview” url, we have to figure this out manually.

It’s not too bad though, fortunately, the PowerShell team gives us a good way to check and a bit of simple comparison to help us determine if we have the newest version. The basic flow is “get the current installed version of PowerShell, then check to see if the current version on github is newer. If it is, download that.”

Now, there’s a couple caveats: the installed version is based on what you’re running the script in. So if you’re going between say stable and preview, if you run the version checker in stable, that will give the version for stable. You’ll have to run it in preview for that, and do your own version comparison. I’m just doing this based on stable.

To see what the current installed version of PowerShell is, we run $PSVersionTable.psversion.ToString() which gives us a nice neat value, so for stable on my machine, I get: 7.5.4

We then want to see what the current stable downloadable version is. Fortunately, the PowerShell team does us a solid by making that available from a stable URL as JSON data. For stable, the URL is: https://aka.ms/pwsh-buildinfo-stable. To check for lts or preview, change -stable to -lts or -preview. If we hit that URL, we get a json file with the following

The ReleaseTag is the thing of the most interest to us. When it comes to downloading, while not giving us a “latest” URL, the PowerShell team does give us a fairly consistent URL pattern. For example, for the installer package for the Apple Silicon macOS version, the URL is: https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/download/v7.5.4/powershell-7.5.4-osx-arm64.pkg, so we can see where we can use the ReleaseTag directly in the URL in between download/ and /powershell-, and then if we yank the leading v off the ReleaseTag, we can use that in the actual package name. Consistency is really handy. The script itself then is:

We use Invoke-RestMethod as our “curl” command, since in this case, it gives us the JSON data in a usable way sans any custom parsing. From there, install it via whatever method you wish. Obviously, the script is a PowerShell script, duh. So the script:

And that’s it. Run this, and when it’s finished, if the github version is newer, you’ll have that package file in /tmp (as $deity intended), ready to go for whatever your next steps are.

#automation #DownloadLatestPowerShellAutomatically #macPowershell #PowerShell #powershellFun #PowershellMac

PowerShell script signer is done!

Well, it's a 1.0.1, there’s a few things I want to add, but it's not bad at the moment. It's on the PowerShell Gallery at: https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/Set-PowerShellScriptSig/1.0.1 and the github link is at: https://github.com/johncwelch/pwshsigner

the readme on the github repo has the small number of future improvements I have planned, but for now, it's a solid MVP.

#PowershellMac
#powershellmacos
#powershell

Minor update to Get-MacInfo, added iBridge data from system_profiler. Install from https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/Get-MacInfo, source at https://github.com/johncwelch/Get-MacInfo

#powershell
#powershellMac
#powershellmacOS

https://bynkiidotcom.wordpress.com/2025/03/13/get-macinfo-update-2/

My new PowerShell module, GetChooseFileName is now up on the PowerShell Gallery:

https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/Get-ChooseFileName

#powershell
#powershellmac
#powershellmacos

Get-ChooseFileName is basically done, getting approval before releasing up to the PowerShell gallery: https://github.com/johncwelch/Get-PSChooseFileName

#powershell
#powershellmac
#powershellmacos

working on my next PS module: https://github.com/johncwelch/Get-PSChooseFileName

#powershell
#powershellmac
#powershellmacos

Getting Warranty Info on your Mac with PowerShell

This was a feature someone asked for with Get-MacInfo. Here's the basics, the script is on the github site, and VERY REAL WARNINGS:

This is incredibly fragile, as it relies on a directory, com.apple.NewDeviceOutreach, being in ~/Library/Application Support/ for the user running the script. I'm not even going to try to play "peekaboo in other user homedirs" with a…

https://bynkiidotcom.wordpress.com/2025/02/04/getting-warranty-info-on-your-mac-with-powershell/

#powershell
#powershellmac
#powershellmacos

Get-ChooseFile and Get-ChooseFolder posted at the PowerShell Gallery!

Both modules are finally published so they can be installed the “right” way!

Get-ChooseFile

Get-ChooseFolder

Get-Help is your friend and there’s documentation on their respective Github repo pages, available via the “Project Site” links for the respective projects

#PowerShell #PowerShellGallery #PowershellMac #PowerShellModules #powershellApplescriptBridge

One advantage of moving to JSON for system_profiler output as opposed to line numbers is that I can get rid of a LOT of duplication.

Directly addressing elements doesn’t suck.

#powershell
#powershellmac