What if your PC could take care of boring tasks for you? With Windows PowerShell, it can. Here’s how I use PowerShell to automate everyday repetitive tasks that I would be less keen to do otherwise.

What is Windows PowerShell?

PowerShell is a command-line shell and scripting language built into Windows that can help you automate administrative and repetitive tasks. If you’ve used it before, it might already feel familiar. But if you’re new to it, don’t worry—PowerShell is easy to pick up.

With PowerShell, you may write scripts to handle everyday tasks like organizing files into folders by type, downloading updates when you sleep, or creating a disk size report to see how much space is left on your computer.

Of course, PowerShell can do a whole lot more. But in this guide, we’ll stick to the basics so you may understand its fundamentals. We’ll also create simple PowerShell scripts and a fun project that lets you organize all the files in the Downloads folder by their type.

Understanding the Basics of PowerShell

To master PowerShell, you must first understand its key components:

Other essential PowerShell cmdlets includeGet-Helpto learn about any cmdlet,Get-Commandto get a command list, andGet-ChildItemto explore files and folders in a directory.

We highly recommend reading our guide onessential PowerShell commandsandWindows PowerShell scriptingto learn more about commands and the basics of scripting. It will help you go beyond the basics and dig deeper into everything PowerShell can do.

Writing Simple PowerShell Scripts

you may use PowerShell to automate almost anything, like batch renaming files for consistency or automating app launches. Let’s write a few simple Windows PowerShell scripts to see it in action.

If you encounter an error when executing a script about the execution policy, you may need to temporarilyallow script executionby running “Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process -ExecutionPolicy Bypass”

Batch Rename Files in a Folder

You canuse PowerShell to copy, move, and delete fileson your PC. You can also batch rename files with specific file types. For instance, here’s how you can rename multiple text files by replacing the prefix “oldco” with “newco” in their filenames:

In the above script, “.txt” is the file extension filter. You can modify and set it to .jpg, .docx, etc, to search for different file types.

Automate Application Launch

If you open the same set of apps every day, you can write a PowerShell script to launch them with one click:

Paste the script into a Notepad file and save it asLaunchFavoriteApps.ps1. Then, simply double-click the file to launch all the apps listed in the script

Copy Important Files to a Backup Location

You can periodically back up important files to a backup location using the following script. verify to change the source and destination paths as needed:

Writing a PowerShell Script to Automate Daily File Organization

Due to the numerous types of files we download daily, theDownloadsfolder can quickly become a mess with all kinds of files scattered around. To fix this, we can write a PowerShell script that organizes downloaded files into folders by file type at the end of each day.

Open a new Notepad file and paste the following script. verify to change the source folder path in the script to match yourDownloadsfolder path:

To save the file, clickFile>Save As, and typeOrganizeDownloadsFolder.ps1as the file name. Then, clickSave as Typeand selectAll Files. Double-click theOrganizeDownloadsFolder.ps1file to run the script.

Task Scheduling and Execution

Of course, writing a script is one part of the automation process. The second part is to ensure the script can automatically execute itself to carry out the task. To do this, we can create scheduled tasks to run a script daily or as needed.

Open PowerShell, then copy and paste the following script and hitEnter. Be sure to replace’J:\OrganizeDownloadsFolder.ps1' with the full file path to yourOrganizeDownloadsFolder.ps1script.

Once done, hit enter. The script will create a scheduled task in theTask Schedulerto run the file organization script daily at 5:00 PM. If you prefer a different time, you can modify it in the above script.

Beyond this, you can use PowerShell to automate other day-to-day tasks, such as a space monitoring script that alerts you when you run out of free space on your primary drive, bulk password-protect PDF documents, and even dynamically apply wallpapers from an image folder.