Get-ChildItemColor provides colorization of outputs of Get-ChildItem Cmdlet of PowerShell. It is based on Tim Johnson’s script, another script by the PowerShell Guy, and PSColor.

It provides two main functionalities:

1. Directly provide coloring outputs of Get-ChildItem by modifying Out-Default. Once the module is imported, Get-ChildItem’s output will be automatically colored. It does support pipeline (e.g., Get-ChildItem | grep ".git"). Also, now the directory name and the headers of its output have consistent colors. This is an adaptation of PSColor.
2. It provides Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide, which uses Write-Host to output coloring. This is because Get-ChildItemColor | Format-Wide does not allow multiple colors in one line. As a result, pipeline does not work with Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide.

It also provides Get-ChildItemColor, which just changes $Host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor and keep the item object intact. This was the implementation before v2.0.0, and it does support pipeline. (e.g., Get-ChildItemColor | grep ".git"). The main shortcoming of this approach is that the directory name and the headers of its output have inconsistent colors.

PowerShellGet is required, which is included in Windows 10 and WMF5. If you are using PowerShell V3 or V4, you will need to install PowerShellGet.

Then, you can run Install-Module -AllowClobber Get-ChildItemColor. Note that you need -AllowClobber option so Get-ChildItemColor may override the existing command Out-Default.

After cloning the repo, you can put files in /src folder into Get-ChildItemColor folder under your PowerShell Module folder ($ENV:UserProfile\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules). The master branch always contains the latest release version.

When you import the module:

Import-Module Get-ChildItemColor

it provides a proxy function for Output-Default, so Get-ChildItem’s output will be automatically colored. In addition, it provides two functions, Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide and Get-ChildItemColor (the latter is unlikely to be useful, but remained intact just in case).

You can add aliases to these functions for convenience. For example, I have the following in my profile[fn:pathProfile] (please do not put this into ISE profile[fn:pathProfileISE] as it does not work in ISE):

If (-Not (Test-Path Variable:PSise)) {  # Only run this in the console and not in the ISE
    Import-Module Get-ChildItemColor
    
    Set-Alias l Get-ChildItem -option AllScope
    Set-Alias ls Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide -option AllScope
}

So l yields colored output of Get-ChildItem and ls yields colored output of Get-ChildItem | Format-Wide equivalent.

[fn:pathProfile] $Home\[My ]Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Profile.ps1

[fn:pathProfileISE] $Home\[My ]Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShellISE_profile.ps1

One can dynamically change the color scheme for different items, thanks to asidlo’s contribution. See the example below.

# Change color for directories to Blue
$GetChildItemColorTable.File['Directory'] = "Blue"

# Change color for executables to Green
ForEach ($Exe in $GetChildItemColorExtensions.ExecutableList) {
    $GetChildItemColorTable.File[$Exe] = "Green"
}

You can adjust the vertical spacing using $Global:GetChildItemColorVerticalSpace. Default is 1 (PowerShell’s default is 2).

$Global:GetChildItemColorVerticalSpace = 1

• Joon Ro.

• BUGFIX: Print directory names correctly when -Recurse option is used

• Re-organize folder structure

• Incorporate PSColor’s implementation of coloring the output of Get-ChildItem.
• Add $Global:GetChildItemColorVerticalSpace option.

• PR #21: Added ReparsePoint (symlink) detection, matched color scheme with Linux (thanks to cmilanf)
• Make empty lines consistent between Get-ChildItemColor and Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide (Fixes #17)

• PR #23: Added customizable color output. (thanks to asidlo)
• Improve README

• Add LICENSE

• Improve README (#15)
• Beautify code

• PR #13: Fallback to Gray when no OriginalForegroundColor (thanks to mikesigs)
• PR #12: Fix a typo (thanks to jqly)

• Robust to non-file entries (Issue #10)

• Revert back to previous implementation of Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide

• The script changes $Host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor only and keep the item object intact
• Get-ChildItemColorFormatWide is basically Get-ChildItemColor | Format-Wide

• Better performance by reducing if’s
• Proper printing of DirectoryEntry for FormatWide case

• Published on PowerShellGallery
• Refactoring; separate out two functions

• Make it a PowerShell module

• Returns vanila Get-Childitem results for DictionaryEntry cases.

• Make function names consistent to the PowerShell naming convention (#8)
• Use parameters more consistently, -Path works with paths with spaces (#3), and -Force works (#9)