Add options for running with no profile to jumplist & explorer

[kilasuit]

Summary of the new feature / enhancement

As a user (not always using Windows Terminal) I would find it beneficial to easily run PowerShell without a profile, choosing whether or not as admin from a right click on taskbar/start menu entry or within a explorer window

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

additional entries added to the jumplist tasks that call PowerShell with the -noprofile flag
an open powershell here with no profile option in explorer

[SteveL-MSFT]

The only concern I have would be if we do this for everyone. I can see it being useful, but I would also guess that 90% of users wouldn't need it. It could be something we have in powershell.config.json to enable.

[iSazonov]

User can run pwsh -noprofile from current PowerShell session.

[dkaszews]

For a taskbar/desktop shortcut, you can just create a shortcut with the --noprofile flag. For shell context menu, you can also create "Open PowerShell here (without profile)" by editing registry.

90% of users wouldn't need it

It's also Windows-specific, Linux users (myself included) had to remind themselves what is this jumpmenu thing

[MartinGC94]

Why would it need to be hidden by default just because 90% of the users don't use it? I can't imagine those 90% would be negatively affected by it so why would they care if it's enabled by default?
I understand that cluttering up the jumplist could be annoying if you use it for other things but PowerShell doesn't have recent files or any other interesting tasks in the jumplist.

[kilasuit]

User can run pwsh -noprofile from current PowerShell session.

For a taskbar/desktop shortcut, you can just create a shortcut with the --noprofile flag.

True can do either of these, but both are slower for the user and ideally shouldn't need additional shortcut or direct registry editing

For shell context menu, you can also create "Open PowerShell here (without profile)" by editing registry.

This ideally should IMO be an additional tick box option in the installer (or perhaps a powershell.config.json option like Steve suggested if it could be more easily managed there)

This is definitely a nice to have, not a critical need

[kilasuit]

Coming back to this I think that this is really needed because if you are either

• Troubleshooting a script
• Trying to repro an issue in this repo
• Wanting a 100% clean session
• Wanting a 100% clean session in a specific location (new additional ask)

Having this as an option at install (on Windows, not sure about on other OSes) would be hugely beneficial and not need additional workarounds that a User may not be able to make (like registry changes) to achieve the same desired result.

[kilasuit]

I'd also like to see the same options for

• Run as Admin (No Profile)
• Run with Custom Profile
• Run as Admin (Custom Profile)

The last two would IMO allow you to specify a path to a custom profile that may be useful in helping troubleshoot profile issues or just to load different shaped and sized profiles depending on the task that you want to do as I personally feel that the one profile meets all needs isn't quite fit for purpose ( I recognise there are profiles for different hosts, different user, all hosts, all users, but there are times where you need to say be SharePoint Admin, Exchange Admin, Tenant 1 Admin, Tenant 2 Admin etc etc) as having an easy jumplist for those profiles would be useful.

Whilst I know this is predominantly a Windows thing, it would be good if possible this could in future become a Linux/Mac OS thing too, even if out of scope for this current ask.

[theJasonHelmick]

Hi @kilasuit - thank for the issue. The WG has reviewed this and have decided to decline the feature request. There are documented ways to add items to the explorer jump list if users desire -- and there is no equivalent for Unix platforms. You can also add Windows Terminal profiles to run with -noprofile. Thank you for the suggestion.