PowerShell theme not working in administrator mode

Question

I have managed to install the oh-my-posh theme for my PowerShell prompt; however, the theme is not working when I start the PowerShell prompt in admin mode.

I have tried to adjust the profile.ps file by moving the reference to the json file to a public folder

(C:\Users\MyUser\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1):
'oh-my-posh init pwsh --config 'C:\Users\Public\oh-my-posh\themes\jandedobbeleer.omp.json' | Invoke-Expression'

My assumption is that the admin user has access to the 'MyUser' folder. Maybe this is not the problem, and I am looking in the wrong place.

The normal PowerShell window works like a charm.

How can I make the oh-my-posh theme also work with the PowerShell prompt in administrator mode?

Answer 1

For a given user, there is no difference in $PROFILE locations between running non-elevated vs. elevated (verify with $PROFILE | Select *), so if your elevated sessions run with the current user identity, they load the same profile files.

However, your screenshot shows:

• The calling, non-elevated session is a (properly oh-my-posh configured) Windows Terminal (WT) session.

• By contrast, your elevated (run-as-admin) session is a regular console window (provided by conhost.exe)

---

Unlike the WT session, this regular console window isn't configured to use a Nerd font, which is required in order for icons in oh-my-posh prompts to render properly - see the docs, which also cover how to configure fonts in Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio (use the relevant tabs).

Therefore, you have two options:

• Configure your regular console windows to use the same font as your WT sessions:

  • Open the elevated window's system menu (via clicking the icon in the top left corner of the window) and choose either Properties or Defaults: the former configures settings for this window and all future windows with the same window title, the latter for all console windows that don't have custom settings.

  • As shown in the following screenshot, pick a Nerd font (the recommended one is shown), after which the icons in the prompt should render properly.

  • 

• Preferably, make sure that elevated PowerShell sessions open in WT too:

  • Interactively, from inside WT:

    • Consider creating a dedicated profile that runs with elevation by default:

      • In the profile's settings, make sure that Run this profile as Administrator is turned on.

    • Ad hoc, when clicking on the dropdown list for opening a new tab with a specific profile, Ctrl-click (right-click) on the profile of interest, with presents a shortcut menu for launching the profile with elevation (as administrator).

  • Programmatically / from outside WT:

    • Unfortunately, at least as of Windows 11 22H2, even configuring your system to use WT by default (run start ms-settings:developers, setting Terminal) is not enough to start elevated sessions in WT - neither via the taskbar nor through programmatic invocation, e.g. via Start-Process -Verb RunAs

    • The following simple PowerShell helper function, psa, can help: it launches an elevated PowerShell session in WT if the current session is also running in WT and works in both PowerShell editions; if you place it in your $PROFILE file, it will be available in future PowerShell sessions.

      # Launch an interactive elevated PowerShell session in WT if running in WT,
      # invariably in a new window.
      function psa { 
        if ($env:WT_SESSION) { Start-Process -Verb RunAs wt.exe "`"$((Get-Process -Id $PID).Path)`"" } 
        else { Start-Process -Verb RunAs (Get-Process -Id $PID).Path } 
      }
      

      • Note:

        • While this works for interactive elevated sessions launched by you, it doesn't prevent scripts from requesting elevation directly via Start-Process -Verb RunAs.

        • In scripts you control, for invocation of elevated sessions with commands to execute, you can avail yourself of the Enter-AdminPSSession function available from this Gist:

          • Assuming you have looked at the linked Gist's source code to ensure that it is safe (which I can personally assure you of, but you should always check), you can install Enter-AdminPSSession directly as follows; after installation, run it with -? to get help:

             irm https://gist.github.com/mklement0/f726dee9f0d3d444bf58cb81fda57884/raw/Enter-AdminPSSession.ps1 | iex
            

Answer 2

Open a PowerShell window as an administrator and run the following command to check if the global profile file exists:

Test-Path $PROFILE.AllUsersCurrentHost

If it returns False, the global profile file doesn't exist yet.

Create the global profile file by running the following command:

New-Item -Path $PROFILE.AllUsersCurrentHost -ItemType File -Force

Open the global profile file in any code/text editor.

Add the necessary configuration for oh-my-posh:

'oh-my-posh init pwsh --config C:\Users\Public\oh-my-posh\themes\jandedobbeleer.omp.json' | Invoke-Expression

Save the changes to the global profile file and close the text editor. Then, open a new PowerShell window as an administrator to see if the oh-my-posh theme is applied.