Working with Get-UICulture in PowerShell

Welcome back to Wahmans PowerShell blog! Today, we are taking a look at the Get-UICulture cmdlet — a simple but handy tool in your PowerShell toolbox. This cmdlet retrieves information about the current user interface culture settings of the operating system. Understanding the system’s UI culture is crucial when working with localization, formatting, and ensuring your scripts behave correctly on different regional settings.

What Is Get-UICulture?

According to Microsoft’s description:

Get-UICulture gets the current UI culture settings in the operating system.

The UICulture refers to the language the system uses for its user interface — such as menus and messages. This can be especially relevant in multilingual environments or when deploying scripts internationally.

Getting Started with Get-UICulture

Let’s explore four practical uses of Get-UICulture — from basic information retrieval to more advanced scripting scenarios.

Example 1: Display Current UI Culture (Beginner)

Get-UICulture

This will return an object representing the current UI culture, e.g.,:

LCID             Name             DisplayName
----             ----             ------------
1033             en-US            English (United States)

Example 2: Accessing Specific Properties (Intermediate)

Want to only get the name of the UI culture (like en-US)?

(Get-UICulture).Name

This is great when you want to format output or integrate into messages.

Example 3: Conditional Logic Based On Culture (Advanced)

Execute a different action based on the user’s UI culture:

switch ((Get-UICulture).Name) {
    "en-US" { Write-Host "Hello!" }
    "sv-SE" { Write-Host "Hej!" }
    default { Write-Host "Hello, World!" }
}

Use this when creating scripts that adapt to localized user environments.

Example 4: Culture-Aware File Naming (Power User)

Want to include the UI culture in a filename for logs or output?

$culture = (Get-UICulture).Name
$timestamp = Get-Date -Format "yyyyMMdd-HHmmss"
$filename = "Log_${culture}_$timestamp.txt"
"Log file created at $timestamp" | Out-File $filename

This creates a uniquely named file like Log_en-US_20240610-120045.txt.

Wrap-Up

Get-UICulture might seem simple, but when used creatively, it can add valuable intelligence and flexibility to your PowerShell scripts — especially in multilingual or global environments.

Happy scripting, and I will see you in the next post!