PowerShell commands cheat sheet

October 9, 2022

I'm much more comfortable using Bash over PowerShell, but there are definitely times that you need to use command line on Windows. So I keep a small, but growing list of my most commonly used cmdlets, their Linux-like aliases, and other must-know commands.

Cmdlets & Linux Equivalents

PowerShell cmdlets have aliases identical to their equivalent Linux commands, here’s the most common:

Command	Alias	Effect
`Get-Location`	`pwd`	Show current directory
`Set-Location`	`cd`	Change to another directory
`Get-Content`	`cat`	Output contents of a file
`New-item`	`touch`	Create a new file
`Copy-Item`	`cp`	Copy a file
`Move-Item`	`mv`	Move a file to new location
`Remove-Item`	`rm`	Delete a file
`Get-ChildItem`	`ls`	Output a list of directory contents
`New-Item -ItemType Directory`	`mkdir`	Create new directory

Advanced Commands

Command	Effect
`shutdown /r /fw /f /t 0`	Reboot into BIOS immediately
`ipconfig /flushdns`	Flush DNS resolver cache (do this when having DNS issues)
`ipconfig`	Display TCP/IP basic information (append `/all` for full info)
`getmac /v`	List MAC addresses of all network adapters
`powercfg /energy`	Power efficiency diagnostics report
`powercfg /batteryreport`	Battery life diagnostics report
`sfc /scannow`	Scan system and repair any integrity violations
`tasklist`	List all running processes and their process IDs
`taskkill /f /pid 12345`	Kill a running task (specify process ID)