CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershellwindows-server-2016
Daniel Leach
Daniel Leach

Reputation: 7305

How can I see the command history across all PowerShell sessions in Windows Server 2016?

Where can you view the full history from all sessions in Windows Server 2016?

The following PowerShell command only includes the commands from the current session:

Get-History

Upvotes: 218

Views: 209728

Answers (7)

Codertjay
Codertjay

Reputation: 997

On windows PowerShell

To get in a session you can use h or history

but to get all commands written in the computer you use

cat (Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath

Upvotes: 24

Maciej Trudnos
Maciej Trudnos

Reputation: 1

You can try this PowerShell Command History

Upvotes: -1

sanigirl
sanigirl

Reputation: 541

There's mention of Windows Server/Enterprise editions, but as a Pro (standard retail version) user HistorySavePath is also available to me. I needed to see what python packages were recently installed in an older session and wanted to add an answer here for people looking for specific things in the history.

# if you like file names and line numbers included in your output
Select-String "<search pattern>" (Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath

# if you Just want the text without any of the other information
Get-Content (Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath | Select-String "<search pattern>"

In my case I ran

Select-String 'pip install' (Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath

which gave me a list of pip install commands run from my previous sessions

...
[Path/To/File]:10401:pip install dash
[Path/To/File]:10824:pip install -r .\requirements.txt
[Path/To/File]:11296:pip install flask-mysqldb
[Path/To/File]:11480:pip install Flask-Markdown
[Path/To/File]:11486:pip install pygments
[Path/To/File]:11487:pip install py-gfm
[Path/To/File]:11540:pip install bs4

Upvotes: 9

RukshanS
RukshanS

Reputation: 181

Since you are on windows you can also use below to open 'notepad' with it.

notepad (Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath

Upvotes: 18

BogdanPopa
BogdanPopa

Reputation: 475

For getting full history from PowerShell and save the output to file I use this command:

Get-Content (Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath > D:\PowerShellHistory.txt

Upvotes: 33

js2010
js2010

Reputation: 27423

The Psreadline module 2.1 beta1 on Powershell gallery (Powershell 7 only) https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/PSReadLine/2.1.0-beta1 does intellisense on the commandline using the saved history: https://github.com/PowerShell/PSReadLine/issues/1468 It's been starting to show up in Vscode. https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/g33503/completion_on_history_in_vscode/

Also in Psreadline, you can search the saved history backwards with either f8 (after typing something on the command line) or control-R. Get-psreadlinekeyhandler lists the key bindings.

get-psreadlinekeyhandler -bound -unbound | ? function -match history

Upvotes: 1

Daniel Leach
Daniel Leach

Reputation: 7305

In PowerShell enter the following command:

(Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath

This gives you the path where all of the history is saved. Then open the path in a text editor.

Try cat (Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath to list the history in PowerShell.

Upvotes: 412

Related Questions