There’s a Part II to this post now, be sure to read it after you’ve read this post.

I find myself inside the Window Terminal’s JSON Settings file each time I update the version of PowerShell on my system. That includes non-preview and preview versions of PowerShell. Well, as of today, that’s changed. Previously I would install an updated version, jump into the JSON Settings file, and modify the Name and TabTitle properties of the corresponding profile. I’ve long wanted the version number on the Tab and so I was hard coding the values. No longer.

Let’s take a look at my prompt function. It’s mostly the default one, with some slight changes. Here’s the prompt code from my $PROFILE. Preview version or not, they both use the same $PROFILE script; therefore, they use the same prompt function.

Function Prompt {
    "$("[PS$($PSVersionTable.PSVersion.ToString())][$($executionContext.SessionState.Path.CurrentLocation)]" * ($nestedPromptLevel + 1)) ";
    # .Link
    # https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=225750
    # .ExternalHelp System.Management.Automation.dll-help.xml
} # End Function: Prompt.

Here’s how the prompt renders in both the non-preview and preview versions of PowerShell.

What I do, and you’ll see it momentarily is extract the version number — “7.1.3” and “7.2.0-preview.4” from the above prompts and write them to the WindowTitle along with what was already there (the word “PowerShell”). The below code is beneath the Prompt function in my $PROFILE script.

$Prompt = prompt
$Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = "$($Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle) $(($Prompt.Split('][').TrimStart('[PS')[0]))"

First, it captures the prompt into a variable called Prompt. Then it manipulates the contents of the variable until we only have what we want. This first thing it does consists of splitting the prompt string at the back-to-back closing and opening square brackets: “][“. In the case of the non-preview prompt, this leaves me with two strings: [PS7.1.3 and C:\]. Next, it trims off the [PS from the start of the first of the two strings. As you can tell, we only have an interest in our first string — the value in the zero index: [0]. Once’s the parsing is complete, our value is appended to the existing value in the WindowTitle property and it is all written back to the WindowTitle property.

It’s from here forward that the title includes not just the word “PowerShell,” but also the version. That’s it. A little extra work now to remove all the work from later on.

There’s a Part II to this post now, be sure to read it.