Updating PowerShell About Help

During some recent work, I realized my new Windows PowerShell 5.1 installs are missing the About help topics. Apparently, this is a known issue, although I don't think it gets a lot of attention. Microsoft is working on improving updateable help for PowerShell 7 which I think will also have a beneficial change for Windows PowerShell. Microsoft has in fact been updating the about topics. All of the help files are open source on GitHub at https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/PowerShell-Docs/tree/staging/reference. I use the about topics often, so I wrote a PowerShell script to download and install the latest About topics from GitHub.

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Download-PSAboutHelp.ps1

The script runs cross platform, although I haven't tested it with PowerShell 6.x. It needs to be run from an elevated session on for Windows PowerShell. The script requires the Platyps module which will be installed if it isn't already. The script does not require git or a GitHub account, although it does rely on the GitHub APIs.

The script can be saved from this Github gist.

This is a script file so you run it with the full path. It will detect your PowerShell version and default location. Although you can specify an alternate path if you don't want to overwrite existing help content. The script has comment-based help if you need it.

Running the Script

When you run the script, it will download the version specific about content from Github to a temporary folder. Each file is then reformatted so that the New-ExternalHelp command from the Platyps module can generate the about help topic.

You may need to restart PowerShell to get the new help topics. Also be aware, that some of the source markdown doesn't format to text very well. We're stuck with the limitations of the Platyps module or the source markdown for now. But it should still be readable as help.

The script downloads and saves content to an EN-US folder. In Windows PowerShell, if you don't see about files under $pshome\en-us you'll want to try this script.

I hope you'll let me know what you think.