Defaulting Windows Terminal to PowerShell 7.x Core

Quick post, I did a quick google and found nothing immediately on this, so figured a quick post might be helpful for folks. My new install of Windows Terminal was defaulting to PowerShell 5:

And to switch to 7.0.1 (core) I had to go to the dropdown and open it each time. Such drudgery!

I want to default to core, luckily this is pretty simple:

Click on the down arrow, then settings:

A json file will open, and you will see a line near the top that has a parameter called defaultProfile with a UUID:

If you scroll down, this matches the Windows PowerShell UUID. Scroll a little more and you will see the UUID for PowerShell Core:

Copy that UUID and put it in for defaultProfile:

Save and restart terminal, and voila:

As I said pretty straight forward, but might save someone a few moments.

16 Replies to “Defaulting Windows Terminal to PowerShell 7.x Core”

    1. I believe this is only in the pre-release version, but yeah the settings UI is a nice option–looking forward to the full inclusion of it

  1. there is now a direct option in Settings->Startup to set the Default Profile, so no need to edit the JSON file any more.

  2. Well I feel pretty stupid. Just click the down arrow. ?? What down arrow? There is no down arrow. Where do you bring this up? For instance, in powershell 7, there is an icon in the upper left and then upper right, an – a square for full screen and an X to close. NO down arrow. Right click on the start button has no down arrow, Left click on the start menu has no down arrow.

    1. The dropdown arrow shows when you’re running PowerShell from Windows Terminal. That’s the default for me. But, you can just start Windows Terminal, and then you’ll have the option of opening a variety of “shells” including the old Windows PowerShell, the new PowerShell, CMD, etc.

      The cool thing is the dropdown’s “Settings” option now brings up a friendly GUI of all the settings and the very first option shown is “Default Profile”. So, instead of editing a JSON file, you can now just choose your default shell from a dropdown list.

  3. It doesn’t work for me. The console still opens for the Powershell 5.3 and not for Powershell 7 when I call it from directly from folder.

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