PowerCLI 10.0.0 was released just a few weeks ago and one of the key updates was the added support for MacOS and Linux operating systems. It’s still amazing to think about! PowerShell and PowerCLI available to users on OSes other than just Windows. Wow!
Let’s put this to action and get PowerCLI installed on a MacOS system.
How to Install PowerShell on a Mac. To install PowerShell on a Mac, just double-click the downloaded.pkg file. It will launch a package installer and install PowerShell like any other application. At the moment, the package doesn’t appear to be signed, so you’ll have to bypass Gatekeeper to install it. To do so, right-click or Ctrl-click. There are many alternatives to PowerShell for Mac if you are looking to replace it. The most popular Mac alternative is Hyper, which is both free and Open Source.If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to PowerShell and 16 are available for Mac.
Prerequisite: Installing PowerShell Core – Package
The minimally required version for MacOS is PowerShell Core 6.0.1. There’s a couple different ways to install PowerShell onto a MacOS system. This first method is downloading the PowerShell package and installing it through GUI installer.
We can start by browsing to the PowerShell GitHub repository, and clicking on the ‘Releases’ button. Alternatively, here’s a direct link: PowerShell Releases page
On the PowerShell Releases page, we will want to download the latest MacOS package to our local system. Now, we will want to run through the installer. Accepting all of the defaults worked in my environment.
Prerequisite: Installing PowerShell – Homebrew
The other main way of installing PowerShell is through Homebrew. Homebrew is a package manager. It will easily allow us to install, update, and remove packages, like PowerShell, directly from the command line!
If you don’t already have Homebew installed, it too can be installed from the command line with the following within Terminal:
/usr/bin/ruby-e'$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)' |
Next, we’ll need to install Homebrew-Cask. Homebrew-Cask is extension of Homebrew to allow for the downloading of additional, pre-compiled, applications. We will perform the install with the following command within Terminal:
Now, we’re ready to install PowerShell onto our MacOS system! This can be done with the following command within Terminal:
Installing PowerCLI
We have our prerequisite of PowerShell installed on our MacOS system. We’re now ready to install PowerCLI!
Start by opening Terminal and starting our PowerShell session by entering:
At this point, we’re in PowerShell so we install PowerCLI just like we have for the past couple versions!
Example: