Get-MarkdownOption

Exploring the Get-MarkdownOption Cmdlet – Customize Markdown Styles in PowerShell

Welcome to another post on Wahmans PowerShell Blog! Today, we’re diving into an interesting and somewhat lesser-known cmdlet introduced in newer versions of PowerShell – Get-MarkdownOption.

Markdown rendering is supported in recent versions of PowerShell, especially for creating rich documentation or formatted messages directly in the terminal. The Get-MarkdownOption cmdlet is your entry point into inspecting how this content is styled by default in your session.

What does Get-MarkdownOption do?

According to Microsoft Docs:

Get-MarkdownOption returns the current colors and styles used for rendering Markdown content in the console.

This may seem like a simple cmdlet, but it opens the door for customizing and improving readability when rendering text-based UI content using Markdown.

Example 1 – Basic usage (Beginner)

If you’re just getting started with Markdown in PowerShell, this is the simplest way to get an overview of how your console renders Markdown:

Get-MarkdownOption

This will output the current settings for various Markdown elements like headers, bold, italic, code blocks, etc.

Example 2 – Getting a specific Markdown style (Beginner/Intermediate)

You can drill down into specific styles. For instance, if you want to view how code blocks are rendered:

(Get-MarkdownOption).Code

This returns an object describing the foreground and background colors and the text decoration used for inline and fenced code.

Example 3 – Piping to Format-List for readability (Intermediate)

To get a detailed view of all Markdown style settings with better readability, you can do:

Get-MarkdownOption | Format-List

This provides a clean breakdown of each Markdown element and its formatting configuration.

Example 4 – Comparing default rendering before customization (Advanced)

If you plan to use Set-MarkdownOption to apply custom styles, it’s a good practice to capture the default styles first:

$defaultStyles = Get-MarkdownOption
$defaultStyles | Export-Clixml -Path "$env:USERPROFILE\defaultMarkdown.xml"

This saves the current Markdown config to a file. You can later import it with:

$defaultStyles = Import-Clixml -Path "$env:USERPROFILE\defaultMarkdown.xml"
Set-MarkdownOption -InputObject $defaultStyles

This technique is great for experimenting safely and reverting changes when needed.

Wrap-Up

The Get-MarkdownOption cmdlet gives us a useful window into how PowerShell renders Markdown. Whether you’re customizing your console experience or tweaking scripts designed to produce formatted output, understanding the default settings is an essential step.

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