PowerShell commands cheatsheet.
Files, pipelines, processes and services — the PowerShell cmdlets you'll use most. Tap to copy.
Get-ChildItemList items in a folder (alias: ls, dir)Set-Location <path>Change directory (alias: cd)New-Item -ItemType Directory <name>Create a new folderCopy-Item <src> <dst>Copy a file or folderMove-Item <src> <dst>Move or rename an itemRemove-Item <path>Delete a file or folderGet-Content <file>Print a file's contents (alias: cat)Select-String "text" <file>Search for text in files (like grep)Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Filter *.logFind files recursively by patternGet-Process | Where-Object CPU -gt 100Filter objects in a pipelineGet-ChildItem | Sort-Object Length -DescendingSort pipeline outputGet-ProcessList running processes (alias: ps)Stop-Process -Name <name>Stop a process by nameGet-ServiceList Windows servicesStart-Service <name>Start a serviceRestart-Service <name>Restart a serviceGet-Help <command>Show help for a commandGet-Command *item*Find commands by name$PSVersionTableShow the PowerShell versionSet-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSignedAllow local scripts to runVerb-Noun makes commands guessable
PowerShell's defining idea is that every command follows a Verb-Noun pattern — Get-ChildItem, Stop-Process, Set-Location — which makes the language unusually discoverable: once you know the verbs (Get, Set, New, Remove, Start, Stop), you can often guess a command before looking it up. Familiar aliases like ls, cd and cat map to these cmdlets, so you can start with what you know from other shells and learn the real names gradually.
The pipeline passes objects, not text
The thing that sets PowerShell apart from bash is that its pipeline carries objects, not plain text. That means you can pipe results into Where-Object to filter by a real property and Sort-Object to order by one, without fragile text parsing. For example, listing processes and filtering to the memory-hungry ones is a clean one-liner. Select-Object picks the columns you want, and ForEach-Object runs an action on each item — the building blocks of most useful scripts.
Help is built in
When you're unsure how a command works, Get-Help <command> -Examples shows real usage, and Get-Member piped onto any object reveals every property and method available on it — the fastest way to discover what you can filter or select by. Between Get-Help and Get-Member you can explore PowerShell without leaving the terminal. These complement the Windows shortcuts and the cross-platform Linux commands.