A PowerShell 7 shell with superpowers. Pickle runs the real PowerShell 7 engine — your cmdlets, modules, scripts and profile all work — but replaces the interactive experience with something much nicer, and adds first-class Windows tooling on top.
Status: early development (0.x). Windows is the primary target; Linux and macOS work for the core shell.
| ✨ Editor | Live syntax highlighting, fish-style autosuggestions, multi-line editing, undo/redo, selection & clipboard |
| 🔎 Search | Fuzzy history (Ctrl+R) scoped to all / this directory / this session; fuzzy completion menu with descriptions |
| 🎨 Prompt & themes | Built-in themeable prompt (git, duration, status, k8s, aws/azure/gcloud, docker, venv, node, .NET/Go/Rust, battery…) and 18 themes — dracula, nord, gruvbox, catppuccin, tokyo-night, rose-pine, a light one, and animated aurora, synthwave, matrix, ember and prism; follows the system's light/dark mode (pk theme auto), imports any Windows Terminal color scheme (pk theme import), drives $PSStyle and your Windows Terminal colors; a red admin theme and logo when elevated (themes guide) |
| 📈 Tab progress | Windows Terminal's tab and taskbar button show a progress ring while a command runs, the real percentage for Write-Progress, and red when it failed; optional bell after long commands (terminal.bellAfterSeconds) |
| 🪟 Panels | Full-screen TUI panels: command palette (F1), files (Ctrl+T), git (Alt+G), jobs (Alt+J), processes (Alt+P), network (Alt+N), network tools (Alt+T), system dashboard (Alt+I), theme gallery (Alt+E), SSH hosts (Alt+H), disks with partitions (Alt+D), winget (Alt+W), Windows Update (Alt+U), Task Scheduler (Alt+S), Windows Sandbox (Alt+X), settings (Alt+,) |
| 🛰️ Network tools | Built in, nothing to install: port scan (pk scan 10.0.0.0/24 -p top100), host discovery with MACs (pk sweep), DNS lookups against any server (pk dns), pk trace, pk whois, TLS certificate checks (pk cert), pk http timings, pk subnet, Wake-on-LAN, pk ip |
| 📥 Missing tools | Type 7z … or nmap … without them installed and Pickle offers to install first — just for you, all users or this session only, added to PATH — instead of a broken command (pk tool install <name>, ~100 known tools from zoxide to Sysinternals: pk tool list) |
| 📊 System | pk dashboard (Alt+I): OS, uptime, CPU/memory/swap history, disks, network, battery, top processes and pending restarts at a glance; pk devious fills the screen hacker-movie style with real data from your machine |
| 💽 Disk management | diskpart without the guesswork: the Disks panel's Partitions tab and wizards for Format-Volume, New/Resize/Remove-Partition, Initialize/Clear/Set-Disk, Repair- and Optimize-Volume; boot and system disks are never offered for wiping |
| 🔤 Fonts | Installs Cascadia Code Nerd Font on request (pk font install) and falls back to plain glyphs when the terminal's font lacks the icons, so no � in the prompt |
| 🧪 Windows Sandbox | Throwaway Windows in one key: presets (safe browsing, test an installer, offline analysis…), shared folders, networking and device switches, winget packages and Pickle itself inside (pk sandbox run) |
| 📦 winget | Browse, search (as you type), install and upgrade packages interactively — as administrator with one UAC prompt for the lot (--admin); pk upgrade updates apps and Windows; one-click (UAC) winget source repair |
| 🧙 Command wizards | F2 on a command opens a guided builder with live preview: curl, nmap, ffmpeg, git, docker, ssh/scp, openssl, robocopy, tar, 7z, kubectl, Get-WinEvent, netsh, certutil, adb, yt-dlp, rsync |
| 🐧 Linux muscle memory | ls -la, grep -rn, rm -rf, export X=1, VAR=x cmd, 2>/dev/null, !!, sudo, apt install → sensible Windows equivalents (shown dimmed) |
| 🛡️ Administrator | A command that fails with "access denied" offers to run again as administrator (sudo, in an elevated Pickle — in Windows Terminal when you use it) |
| 🔗 Aliases | Permanent aliases, including parameterized (gco {branch}, filled in order or by name: scan out=home 10.0.0.1), script, directory- and machine-scoped |
| 🔌 Plugins | Any PowerShell module can be a plugin (Register-PicklePanel, -Wizard, -Command, -PromptSegment, -Hook…); .NET plugins add full panels and services — see the plugin guide |
| ☁️ Sync | Sync config, aliases, themes and history across machines through a folder (OneDrive…) or a git repo |
| ⏰ Scheduler | pk schedule add "every 30m" <command> and a Task Scheduler panel |
| Method | Command |
|---|---|
| winget | winget install Daolyap.Pickle (after the first release is published) |
| Scoop | scoop bucket add pickle https://github.com/Daolyap/Pickle then scoop install pickle/pickle |
| MSI | Download pickle-<version>-win-x64.msi from Releases — choose the folder and features (PATH, Windows Terminal profile, Nerd Font, Start menu and desktop shortcuts); uninstalling asks whether to remove your settings and history too |
| Portable | Download pickle-<version>-win-x64.exe and run it; the first run offers the font, a Windows Terminal profile and making Pickle the default (pk setup shows it again) |
| Fedora / RHEL | Download pickle-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm from Releases, then sudo dnf install ./pickle-*.x86_64.rpm |
| Other Linux | Download pickle-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz, extract pickle somewhere on your PATH (needs libicu) |
Pickle looks for a newer release once a day in the background and says so under the banner
(shell.checkForUpdates); pk version check asks right away, and pk version update installs it for the portable exe and
the MSI (downloaded from the GitHub release and checked against its SHA256SUMS.txt). Scoop, winget and RPM installs
update through their package manager.
PowerShell 7 does not need to be installed — Pickle ships the engine. If pwsh is installed, its modules are
picked up too, and pk config set shell.loadPwshProfile true loads your existing profile.
pk help # all Pickle commands
pk theme set powerline # switch theme (also updates the Windows Terminal color scheme)
pk theme set aurora # an animated theme
pk theme gallery # or Alt+E: every theme previewed live in its own colors
pk theme auto # light theme in light mode, dark theme in dark mode
pk theme import "One Half Dark" # any Windows Terminal color scheme as a Pickle theme
pk alias add gco 'git checkout {branch}' --kind param
pk alias add scan 'nmap -A -oN {out=scan}.txt {*}' --kind param # then: scan out=home 10.0.0.0/24 10.0.0.9
pk winget search ripgrep # or press Alt+W
pk upgrade # upgrade all apps + Windows updates
pk update check # Windows Update
pk schedule add "daily 09:00" pk upgrade --name morning-upgrade
pk sync init "$env:OneDrive\Pickle"
pk config # or press Alt+, for the settings panel
pk scan 192.168.1.0/24 -p web # port scan (Alt+T opens all the network tools)
pk dns example.com all # every record type
pk tool install jq --temp # a tool for this session only
pk dashboard # live system overview (Alt+I)
pk font install # Cascadia Code Nerd Font for the prompt icons
pk setup # run the first-start setup again
pk bugreport # a zip for an issue: versions, pk doctor, config and logs, secrets removed
pk sandbox run "Test an installer" # throwaway Windows with Downloads shared read-only
pk plugin new MyTools # start a plugin (docs/plugins.md)Keys: F1 palette · Ctrl+R history · Tab completion · → accept suggestion · Ctrl+T files ·
F2 wizard · Alt+G git · Alt+W winget · Alt+U updates · Alt+J jobs · Alt+S scheduler · Alt+, settings ·
Alt+P processes (pk top) · Alt+N network (pk net) · Alt+T network tools (pk tools) · Alt+D disks (pk disks [folder]) · Alt+I dashboard (pk dashboard) · Alt+E theme gallery (pk theme gallery) · Alt+H SSH hosts (pk ssh) ·
Alt+X Windows Sandbox (pk sandbox).
Everything lives in %APPDATA%\Pickle (~/.config/pickle elsewhere; override with PICKLE_HOME):
config.json (synced), config.local.json (this machine only), aliases.json, themes/, wizards/,
plugins/, profile.ps1, history.jsonl. config.json has a JSON schema, so editors autocomplete it.
C# / .NET 10, hosting Microsoft.PowerShell.SDK; Terminal.Gui v2 for panels. See CLAUDE.md for the
conventions and testing approach, docs/architecture.md for a map of the code, and
docs/ for more.
scripts/check.sh # build (warnings = errors) + format + all tests
scripts/check.sh --e2e # plus real-terminal end-to-end tests
dotnet run --project src/Pickle