Get-PSProvider PowerShell Command
PowerShell

Get-PSProvider | Taking on PowerShell one cmdlet at a time | Weekly Blog

Share this post:

This is a part of an on-going blog series written by Adam Gordon. Each week, Adam will walk you through a PowerShell command, showing you when and how to use each one. This week, Adam covers Get-PSProvider.

When to use Get-PSProvider?

The Get-PSProvider cmdlet gets the PowerShell providers in the current session. You can get a particular drive or all drives in the session.

PowerShell providers let you access a variety of data stores as though they were file system drives.

What version of PowerShell am I using?

Get the PowerShell Version from your machine:

$PSVersionTable

This command shows you the PowerShell version information on your machine.

How to use Get-PSProvider?

Display a list of all available providers:

Get-PSProvider

This command displays a list of all available PowerShell providers.

Display a list of all PowerShell providers that begin with specified letters:

This command displays a list of all PowerShell providers with names that begin with the letter for r.

Get-PSProvider f*, r* | Format-List

Find snap-ins or module that added providers to your session:

This command finds the PowerShell snap-ins or modules that added providers to your session. All PowerShell elements, including providers, originate in a snap-in or in a module.

This command uses the PSSnapin and Module properties of the ProviderInfo object that Get-PSProvider returns. The values of these properties contain the name of the snap-in or module that adds the provider.

The command gets all of the providers in the session and formats them in a table with the values of their Name, Module, and PSSnapin properties.

Get-PSProvider | Format-Table name, module, pssnapin -auto

Resolve the path of the Home property of the file system provider:

This example shows that the tilde symbol (~) represents the value of the Home property of the FileSystem provider.

The Home property value is optional, but for the FileSystem provider, it is defined as $env:homedrive\$env:homepath or $home.

Resolve-Path ~

(get-psprovider FileSystem).home

Learn last week’s command: Get-Service.

Need PowerShell training? Check out ITProTV’s PowerShell online IT training courses.