Detent Point
When PowerShell 6 was announced, I found out it wouldn’t have an ISE. I took a step back, honestly confused. Visual Studio Code was presented as the new ISE, and it was announced as if that wouldn’t be a problem. It quickly became apparent that it would be: nobody in our compliance office was going to approve installing VS Code on every server we run in dev, test, stage, and production.
I knew right away what that meant for teams like mine. We were never going to adopt the new features of 6 or 7, because we couldn’t put an editor that supports them on the machines where the work happens. And we use an ISE everywhere we go, on every machine: debugging a production problem, installing and configuring, verifying infrastructure, chasing down a performance issue. We want to see the code while we work, and sometimes edit the script as we figure out what’s wrong. A minimal console without an editor doesn’t cover that.
DetentShell is our answer to that. We’ve worked to keep its footprint small, to have it properly approved and delivered through the Microsoft Store, and to match the working feel of the Windows PowerShell 5.1 ISE. We hope you can deploy it to every machine you need and get the same work done — and upgrade your scripts to 7 and use the newest techniques while you’re at it. And we hope it frees you to embrace PowerShell’s future.
— Keith Ramsey, Detent Point
Microsoft is no longer developing the Windows PowerShell ISE, and PowerShell itself has moved on to version 7. That leaves teams with years of ISE habits and no obvious place to take them. DetentShell gives those teams current PowerShell 7 in an editor they already know how to use, with Windows PowerShell 5.1 available in the same window for the scripts that still need it. For ISE users, there isn’t much retraining to do.
The model to internalize on day one: script tabs inside a session share that session’s runspace, and sessions are isolated from each other. Run a script, and its variables are live at the prompt and visible to sibling tabs. Need a clean slate or a blast wall, open a new session (Ctrl+T). Tab and session counts are capped in Settings, and hitting a cap gets you a message, not a slowdown. Settings (Tools menu or the toolbar gear) validates on Apply and takes effect live; themes switch the whole window immediately, High Contrast included.
When you first open DetentShell you’ll see a blue console and not much else. That’s normal. Type a command and press Enter, and you’re using PowerShell. When you want to write a script, press Ctrl+N and an editor appears above the console. Press F5 to run what you wrote. The results land in the console below, and anything your script created, like a variable called $results, is still there for you to look at. That loop — edit above, run, poke at the results below — is most of what the tool is.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Install | MSIX package, per-user, clean uninstall |
| Signing | Signed by Microsoft at Store publication; Windows verifies the signature at install |
| Publisher | Detent Point — identity verified through Microsoft Store onboarding |
| Elevation | Never required to install or run; explicit Run-as-Administrator relaunch available, with a permanent on-screen badge while elevated |
| Network | None initiated by the app; only user actions (Update-Help, module installs, WinRM sessions the user opens) |
| Data collection | None |
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Windows 10 1809 or later | MSIX platform floor |
| PowerShell 7 (bundled via Microsoft.PowerShell.SDK) | The primary scripting engine — Microsoft’s own, hosted in-process |
| Windows PowerShell 5.1 (optional) | Enables 5.1 session tabs; the menu item disables itself when 5.1 is absent |
The app collects no data and initiates no network traffic on its own, which keeps it inside most restricted-workstation policies without an exception request. All themes are WCAG AA contrast-tested.
DetentShell is a signed app, and here is what that means in practice. It installs from the Microsoft Store, so Microsoft signs the package when it’s published and Windows checks that signature before installing anything — a package that has been altered since signing won’t install. Detent Point’s publisher identity was verified by Microsoft during Store onboarding. And because the package is MSIX, the install stays per-user and contained, and uninstalling removes it cleanly.
The Store listing link lands on that badge the moment the listing is public.
Age ratings came back all-ages in every ratings system — ESRB Everyone, PEGI 3, USK 0, and IARC 3+ among them.
Rating-badge artwork must come from each ratings body’s official kit, and those files haven’t been pulled into the site yet — so the ratings above stand as text until the official art lands. The rating facts themselves are transcribed from the Partner Center record.
From here: running scripts covers F5, F8, and the engine picker, or head back to the wiki index for all nine pages.
PS> Start-Process "https://detentpoint.com/detentshell/download"
# Coming soon — ships once the installer is code-signedComing soon. DetentShell launches at $29.99 in the Microsoft Store for its first two weeks. The regular price that follows is not final yet and will be published here first; volume licensing for teams is handled separately.