Move PowerShell folder on Windows from ${env:USERPROFILE}\OneDrive\Documents\PowerShell to ${env:USERPROFILE}\.powershell

[KirkMunro]

Recent releases of Windows 10 have replaced the Documents folder in a user's profile with OneDrive\Documents, which is automatically mirrored into each user's cloud-hosted OneDrive account. OneDrive only offers 5GB of cloud space for free, and once that is full important documents may not be mirrored into the cloud. Since Windows PowerShell modules can be quite large (the Az module bundle is 53MB, and the AWSPowerShell.NetCore module bundle is 81MB), it doesn't take much time with side-by-side versioning of frequently updated modules installed in a local user profile to start consuming a lot of OneDrive space, when there is no need to back those files up to OneDrive whatsoever since they are installed from a cloud repository.

To correct this, and provide one less reason for users' free OneDrive space to be completely and unnecessarily consumed, I propose that the Documents\PowerShell folder for PowerShell Core on Windows be moved and renamed to ${env:USERPROFILE}\.powershell. This new location and naming is in line with other products like Nuget (uses a .nuget folder for package storage), VS Code (uses .vscode), LibMan in Visual Studio (uses .librarymanager), and many more. This shift is the right approach based on new handling and best practices for a user's Documents folder in Windows, which should only be used to store documents that users want automatically backed up into the cloud.

[thezim]

It should use the XDG Base Directory Specification like the other operating system. Is there any reason to have Windows be different?

[KirkMunro]

@thezim I don't agree or disagree (I wasn't familiar with that spec before you mentioned it), but at a glance I think that is a different issue to propose than this specific problem that should be resolved independently of a directory specification.

[thezim]

Sorry for not being clear. What I meant to say was PowerShell already respects XDG spec for Linux and macOS. We should extend that to Windows as well. Module when then go in ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules which would address the issue.

https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell-Docs/blob/staging/reference/docs-conceptual/setup/Installing-PowerShell-Core-on-Linux.md#paths

https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell-Docs/blob/staging/reference/docs-conceptual/setup/Installing-PowerShell-Core-on-macOS.md#paths

[rkeithhill]

I've never liked modules being stored under Documents. Seems to me they should have been stored under $env:\LocalAppData\Microsoft\PowerShell\Modules or some path like that.

BTW I defined this symlink a while back in my home dir:

.powershell -> C:\Users\Keith\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\

I wonder if .dirs should be hidden by default like they are on Linux? I suppose mostly developers will wind up with these so perhaps it's OK that they're not hidden.

RE ~\.local, I like the idea but you've got some other teams to convince:

.config
.dotnet
.electron
.nuget
.omnisharp
.rcedit
.vscode
.vscode-insiders

[thezim]

I don’t perfer .local either but having it the same across all platforms would be nice for PowerShell. All those teams are consistent across their platforms, we are not.

[KirkMunro]

I agree with the benefits of consistency. The path doesn't matter so much since you can just set up PSDrive's in a profile, and I wasn't personally attached to the path I proposed -- I simply chose it based on the other similar paths like .nuget, .vscode, etc.

[ajventi]

I discovered this ~/OneDrive "feature" the other day login into a new machine. It has to be moved, because you will lose the ability to have unique profiles local to a particular machine. Not to mention scripts are not Documents in the first place.

[zigford]

I find it handy to have Powershell modules/profile roam using Onedrive. That said, I agree consistency with the other OS'es would be better. I usually run a powershell setup script manually on each machine I use to symlink the profiles back to onedrive anyway.

[totkeks]

I agree with the OP on this issue. I recently upgraded my Win10 and now I got those files in Onedrive/Documents as well. While I like the idea of sharing my default profiles and possibly scripts across PCs using OneDrive, this should be done using the proper Windows folders, namely AppData Local/Roaming, because this is the convention on Windows and it works well. Also better than dotfiles and dotfolders in the home directory.

So the correct path would be something like $env:APPDATA\Microsoft\Powershell\ or $env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\Powershell\

[leotabakov]

Is it possible to change it manually? And if so how I can do it?

[KirkMunro]

@SteveL-MSFT It would be nice to iron out the direction on this one for PS 7, to bring Windows PS and PS Core together with a better user module/script path on Windows. Would you mind tabling this with the committee?