Detent Point
The Windows PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) is the script editor Microsoft built into Windows alongside Windows PowerShell. It pairs a script pane with a live console: write a script above, run it below, in the same window. It ships with supported versions of Windows, so most people never had to download or install it separately: it was already there.
For a long time it was the default way to write and test PowerShell on Windows: syntax highlighting, IntelliSense (Ctrl+Space) since PowerShell 3, PowerShell tabs (Ctrl+T), F1 for built-in help, F9/F10/F11 for breakpoints and stepping.
Microsoft’s own documentation is direct about this: the ISE is “no longer in active feature development,” supported “up to and including Windows PowerShell V5.1,” and “there is no support for the ISE in PowerShell v6 and beyond.” Their guidance points people at Visual Studio Code with the PowerShell extension instead. (Microsoft Learn: Introducing the Windows PowerShell ISE)
Windows PowerShell 5.1 itself is also the end of that line: it’s the last version of Windows PowerShell, built on .NET Framework, Windows-only. PowerShell 7 is the cross-platform, open-source successor built on current .NET, a different runtime rather than a version bump, and the ISE was never rebuilt for it.
Officially: Visual Studio Code with the PowerShell extension, actively maintained and fully supporting PowerShell 7. It started as an editor for any language, though, and that shows on first launch: the terminal is one panel among several rather than a dedicated console dock, and there’s no PowerShell-specific theme applied by default. Both are configurable. Neither is set up for you the way the ISE’s layout was.
Unofficially, and independently of Microsoft: DetentShell, built specifically to bring that layout and keyboard muscle memory back for PowerShell 7 — F5 to run, F8 for the selection, F9 for a breakpoint, the console right where the ISE always kept it.
Does PowerShell 7 have an ISE? → · Every ISE-successor option, compared honestly →
A lot of real work still runs on 5.1: Intune, ConfigMgr, and Group Policy scripting still expect it, and some Windows-native cmdlets don’t carry over to PowerShell 7 yet. No editor changes any of that; it’s a fact about the platform, not about your tooling. What DetentShell does is route a script to whichever engine it needs, 5.1 or 7, in the same window, so you’re not running two separate apps while you migrate one script at a time.
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.