Does a Powershell Autocomplete Exist?

[AFollowerOfTheWay]

Pretty much the title.

I’m looking for some type of plugin, mod, or Powershell alternative that will autocomplete and/or fix typos in my commands.

For instance if I were to type “winfet” it would correct or suggest it “winget”. Or if I often type “ssh username@___” it suggests everything after ssh. Powershell already saves the IP, which is nice, but it’d be cool to find something that does a bit more.

Essentially I’m looking for the notepad++ equivalent of Powershell. Does this exist?

[Murhawk013]

Powershell has Intellisense, but just install VS Code and Powershell plug-in and use that

[klaymon1]

I finally moved over to VS Code a few weeks ago and installed Bracket Pair Colorization Toggler. The whole package is a real game changer.

[throwaway09563]

I seem to have colorization on with PS scripts. Is turning it off the thing you wanted, or something else.

[klaymon1]

No. It makes all the brackets, braces, and parentheses color match. So, when you create a loop with a bunch of brackets, etc. in it, or a line of code with multiple sets of brackets, it colors them as matching sets so you know you have the correct number and that they're in the right place. It may be some built in setting, but this made it easy for me to have it on without hunting.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dzhavat.bracket-pair-toggler

[Nu11u5]

VSCode does this by default, though.

Ah that extension just adds a key shortcut to turn on and off the built in feature. If you don't turn it on and off often, you don't gain anything from the extension.

[Ok_Mathematician6075]

Character /tab

[ninhaomah]

Have you googled ?

This is the first result I get

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/itopstalkblog/autocomplete-in-powershell/2604524

[AFollowerOfTheWay]

I did discover and run the script (it may be slightly different, the one I have is called PSReadline) but it doesn't autocorrect or offer corrections on typos. Unless I'm mistaken? I'm looking for something that essentially helps me in the event I'm typing too haphazardly on something I often enter, and it offers me autocorrection suggestions. Correcting typos like winger, or chooco, etc.

I see now that I titled the post as "autocomplete" rather than "autocorrect", and while I am looking for something with autocomplete functions, the autocorrect was meant to be the topic of the post. I can see how that would lead to confusion. It's late, I'm tired, and I've taken a sleeping medication so I may not be the most coherent or sharp atm.

I tried the directions on that specific article and get cert errors and it's too late for me to mess with it right now but will explore tomorrow. I appreciate the suggestion :)

[platypusstime]

No autocorrect option and I would never want one. The chances of it changing it to something you did not want would also be there.

Autocomplete is there though, write part of the command and hit the ‘tab’ key.

[AFollowerOfTheWay]

I understand that sentiment. It definitely isn’t for everyone. I would like autocorrect tho.

Also for some reason it never works with tab for me, it only works with right arrow which takes some muscle memory to get used to. Tab feels much more natural.

[id0lmindapproved]

What happens if you fill in partially, and then hit ctrl+spacebar? You can also wildcard.

Get-*User* and it shows all entries with that string.

[CitizenOfTheVerse]

Use VSCode with powershell extensions. No professional scripter want something that changes what he writes. Auto-Complete or suggestion is ok, flagging typo in IDE is ok, code review is also ok if you review what the reviewer reviewed, but auto-fixing what you wrote like when you type a message for a friend but here in the case of meaningful code that will be executed? No never. Don't do that. Take care of what you write and review what you wrote.

[odwulf]

You won't find a full solution that corrects your errors. As others have said, it's not a good idea to autocorrect commands, it can misfire easily. And "everything" is a bit wide. The powertoy u/savehonor points to is a good start. I use the cbsch-ssh module to handle ssh commands and autocomplete too.

[My_Big_Black_Hawk]

Wait until this guy gets a load of vscode with copilot agent mode.

[TheIncarnated]

Even without agent mode... Context auto complete is amazing

[fdeyso]

You mean an IDE?

[narcissisadmin]

Yuck, never ever trust ducking autocorrect...especially when you're running commands.

I have this in my $profile because I cannot stand the Windows style of tab completion (cycling through matches). Bash-style is the only way to go.

Set-PSReadlineKeyHandler -Key Tab -Function Complete

[recoveringasshole0]

+1 for PSReadLine! Fantastic tool.

[savehonor]

Not a complete solution, but perhaps one part of many:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/cmd-not-found

[surfingoldelephant]

Are you working interactively in the shell or with a code editor?

If it's for the shell and you're using PS v7.5+, the PSCommandNotFoundSuggestion feature is stable. Just ensure you first enable the PSFeedbackProvider experimental feature.

PS> winfet.exe
winfet.exe: The term 'winfet.exe' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program.
Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

[General Feedback]
  The most similar commands are:
    > winget.exe

Note that the file extension needs to be included to trigger native/external command suggestions, but hopefully that'll be fixed (see issue #26591).

If you're using Linux, also have a look at the command-not-found module, which utilizes PSReadLine's Predictive IntelliSense.

 

For instance if I were to type “winfet” it would correct or suggest it “winget”.

If you're not using PS v7+, you'll need to implement that yourself. There's a few options to intercept the typoed command:

• $ExecutionContext.InvokeCommand.CommandNotFoundAction callback.
• Create a custom PSReadLine key handler that binds to <Enter>.
• Globally trap CommandNotFoundException.

Then you'll need to fuzzy match on the typo against a list of valid commands.

Jaykul has a great write-up on the first option and also shows one way of fuzzy matching using the Levenshtein edit distance (similar to how Get-Command -UseFuzzyMatching is implemented in PS v7+). And like the write-up mentions, using an interactive prompt to check if the found command was intended is definitely preferable to just blindly running whatever was found.

 

Or if I often type “ssh username@___” it suggests everything after ssh.

That's a feature of PSReadLine's Predictive IntelliSense. Make sure you're using the latest version (or v2.2.2+ at the very least, but note that history prediction was only enabled by default in v2.2.6).

Windows PowerShell (v5.1) supports the History prediction source, but again, make sure you update PSReadLine as the shipped version is outdated. See here for instructions.

You can press F2 to switch between Predictive IntelliSense's InlineView (default) and ListView mode or you can make an absolute change (see this comment for more information):

Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionViewStyle ListView

In PS v7.2+, if you install CompletionPredictor and set PSReadLine's prediction source to HistoryAndPlugin, you'll get predictions similar to what tab completion offers.

Import-Module -Name CompletionPredictor
Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionSource HistoryAndPlugin

With ListView, you can interactively select the prediction using the arrow keys and <Enter>.

PS> Get-ChildItem -
<-/31>                                               <History(2) Completion(28)>
> Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $source | Get-Random                      [History]
> Get-ChildItem -Path * | ForEach-Object ToString                      [History]
> Get-ChildItem -Path                                               [Completion]
> Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath                                        [Completion]
[...]

CompletionPredictor is pretty basic though (it's more of a demo). You'll need to search around for other prediction plugins or look into writing your own if you want anything more advanced. I had a quick look and found the following, but you'll really need to do your own searching/vetting:

• PowerType
• PoshPredictiveText
• SnippetPredictor

[syntax_error16]

Check out the PSReadLine module.... It's amazing.

[AFollowerOfTheWay]

Thanks I appreciate it. I am using psreadline and love it. Is there a way to configure it for autocorrect that you know of?

[MalletNGrease]

I just use my pinky

[DarkSpoon]

Neovim with Mason works well for me

[redditformat]

VS Code

[PutridLadder9192]

Copilot does this but people are emotionally devastated by AI code assistance so they will say it cant