How to Create a GUI for PowerShell Scripts

The default command-line interface of PowerShell script makes them difficult to use for non-technical users. You can add a simple graphical user interface (GUI) to your PowerShell scripts to make them user-friendly and to allow to perform specific tasks that require user interaction.

Frameworks to add GUI to PowerShell scripts

To add a GUI to PowerShell scripts, there are two most commonly used frameworks:

• .NET Windows Forms class (WinForms) — to create a GUI form, it is necessary to describe all the graphical elements and their properties in the script code. Then add script logic into the PowerShell code. This method is ideal for beginners and simple GUI scripts.
• Use standard Windows graphical dialogs which only allows the user to be informed and asked to make a choice.
• Windows Presentation Framework (WPF). WPF allows to quickly create a GUI form with the necessary controls in a graphical editor and export the form to an XML-based format. The appearance and logic of the script is divided into two files.

Create a GUI for PowerShell Script Using the WinForms Class

Let’s use the WinForms class to create a simple PowerShell script, which shows the last password change date for an AD user.

The overall process of creating a GUI PowerShell script using .NET Windows Forms is as follows:

1. Create a PS1 script and load the Windows Forms assembly.
2. Create a graphical dialog form (System.Windows.Forms.Form), set its title, size, and position.
3. Add graphical controls to the form (labels, buttons, checkboxes, etc). Set their size, appearance, text, position.
4. Add event handlers to control elements events (for example, a handler for a button event).
5. Add a menu bar to the form (optional).
6. Show the form to the user.

Start by creating a new .PS1 file (you can use the built-in PowerShell ISE, or install VSCode, or even Notepad++ as a PowerShell code editor).

Create GUI Form with PowerShell

Load the .NET System.Windows.Forms assembly:

Add-Type -assembly System.Windows.Forms

Then create a form object. The form is essentially a blank canvas for the placement of graphical elements.

$main_form = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Form

Set the form title, width, and height (in pixels):

$main_form.Text ='GUI for my PowerShell script'

$main_form.Width = 600

$main_form.Height = 400

Now display the form on the screen:

$main_form.ShowDialog()

Run the script (press F5 in your code editor).

Add Control Items to a PowerShell Form

ow add individual interface elements to the form. The following graphical elements can be added to a form:

• Label (show a text)
• TextBox (used to get user input)
• Button
• CheckBox
• RadioButton
• ComboBox (drop down list)
• ChekedListBox
• GroupBox
• ListBox
• DataGridView
• ListView
• TreeView
• DateTimePicker
• PictureBox
• ProgressBar
• HScrollBar
• VScrollBar
• ContextMenu (right-click menu)
• Menu (top menu)

Let’s add a Label element that displays a custom text.

$Label = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Label

$Label.Text = "AD users"

# Set font family name and size

$Label. Font = 'Microsoft Sans Serif,14'

# Set element position based on pixels from left and top of form

$Label.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(0,10)

$Label.AutoSize = $true

$main_form.Controls.Add($Label)

Then add a ComboBox item to a form. This is a drop-down list control that contains the list of AD users (generated by using the Get-ADuser cmdlet from the PowerShell Active Directory module).

$ComboBox = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox

$ComboBox.Width = 300

$Users = Get-ADuser -filter * -Properties SamAccountName

Foreach ($User in $Users)

{

$ComboBox.Items.Add($User.SamAccountName);

}

$ComboBox.Location  = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(60,10)

$main_form.Controls.Add($ComboBox)

Add two more labels:

• Label2 with a static text.
• Label3 will show the last password change date for the selected AD user.

$Label2 = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Label

$Label2.Text = "Last Password Set:"

$Label2.Location  = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(0,40)

$Label2.AutoSize = $true

$main_form.Controls.Add($Label2)

$Label3 = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Label

$Label3.Text = ""

$Label3.Location  = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(110,40)

$Label3.AutoSize = $true

$main_form.Controls.Add($Label3)

Now add the control Button object:

$Button = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Button

$Button.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(400,10)

$Button.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(120,23)

$Button.Text = "Check"

# Set button background and font colors (optional)

# Button. BackColor = "#45fc03"

# Button. ForeColor = "#ffffff"

$main_form.Controls.Add($Button)

Insert the element code before the ShowDialog method. Run the script to see how your GUI form looks like.

Add Event Handlers to PowerShell Script

After the creation of a form with a graphical element, add some logic to the script. We will add a handler to the button click event:

$Button.Add_Click(

{

$Label3.Text =  [datetime]::FromFileTime((Get-ADUser -identity $ComboBox.selectedItem -Properties pwdLastSet).pwdLastSet).ToString('MM dd yy : hh ss')

}

)

In this case, the script gets the value of the pwdLastSet attribute of an AD user selected in the $ComboBox.

Add Custom Menu GUI in PowerShell Scripts

Then you can add a top menu to the form created earlier. For example, my menu will contain the following items:

• File
• — Save
• — Exit
• Help
• — About

The following WinForms objects are used to create the menu:

• MenuStrip – add a horizontal menu;
• ToolStripMenuItem – add menu item;
• ToolStripButton – bind action to menu item.

Create some new objects for your menu:

$menuMain         = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.MenuStrip

$mainToolStrip    = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip

$menuFile         = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem

$menuSave         = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem

$menuExit = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem

$menuHelp         = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem

$menuAbout        = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem

$toolStripOpen    = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripButton

$toolStripSave    = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripButton

$toolStripExit = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripButton

$toolStripAbout = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripButton

Insert your menu to the GUI form ($main_form):

$main_form.MainMenuStrip = $menuMain

$main_form.Controls.Add($menuMain)

[void]$mainForm.Controls.Add($mainToolStrip)

Show the first menu item:

# Show Menu Bar

[void]$main_Form.Controls.Add($menuMain)

# Menu: File

$menuFile.Text = "File"

[void]$menuMain.Items.Add($menuFile)

Then add a drop-down menu item to the File menu:

# Menu: File -> Save

$menuSave.Text         = "Save"

$menuSave.Add_Click({SaveFile})

[void]$menuFile.DropDownItems.Add($menuSave)

# Menu: File -> Exit

The Add_Click method used to perform an action when the user clicks a menu item (in this example, the script was stopped when the Exit menu was clicked):

$menuExit.Text         = "Exit"

$menuExit.Add_Click({$main_Form.Close()})

[void]$menuFile.DropDownItems.Add($menuExit)

Now add the next menu section:

# Menu: Help

$menuHelp.Text      = "Help"

[void]$menuMain.Items.Add($menuHelp)

# Menu: Help -> About

$menuAbout.Text      = "About"

$menuAbout.Add_Click({ShowAbout})

[void]$menuHelp.DropDownItems.Add($menuAbout)

Run the PowerShell script. A horizontal menu with nested sub-menu items will be displayed at the top of the form.

Add the handlers for the Click event on the rest menu items (SaveFile, OpenFile, ShowAbout). Let’s define the following PowerShell function for the About menu:

function ShowAbout {

[void] [System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::Show( “My simple PowerShell GUI script with dialog elements and menus v1.0”, “About script”, “OK”, “Information” )

}

Save your PowerShell script to the PS1 file. To run the PowerShell script, users can use the command:

powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -NoProfile -WindowStyle Hidden -File "C:\ps\posh_gui.ps1"

Or you can save this command in a BAT-file. Users can then run the .bat file to start the PowerShell script, regardless of the execution policy settings.

Hint. Or convert your PS1 script file into EXE app using the PS2EXE module:

Install-Module ps2exe -Repository PSGallery
ps2exe -inputFile “C:\PS\posh_gui.ps1” -outputFile “C:\PS\posh_gui.exe”

Using Standard Windows Dialog Boxes in PowerShell Scripts

In cases where you only need to display some popup messages or get user input, you can use the standard Windows graphical dialogs in scripts.

To display a simple modal window with text and buttons, use the MessageBox class.

Show an message box with text and OK button:

[void] [System.Windows.MessageBox]::Show( "All changes have been implemented successfully ", "Script completed", "OK", "Information" )

Display a message box that requires a response (Yes/No/Cancel):

$answer = [System.Windows.MessageBox]::Show( "Dou you want to remove this user?", " Removal Confirmation", "YesNoCancel", "Warning" )

Prompt a user for credentials and split it on two variables:

$creds = Get-Credential $UserName

$getUsername = $creds.GetNetworkCredential( ).UserName

$getPassword = $creds.GetNetworkCredential( ).Password

Building the GUI for PowerShell Scripts with Visual Studio

Then you need to create a complex GUI form with a large number of control element, use the Visual Studio with a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) as a simple GUI builder.

Download and install the Visual Studio Community 2022 > select .Net desktop development.

Run the Microsoft Visual Studio and create a new Project (File > New > Project). Select Visual C# > WPF App (.NET Framework) C#.

Use the Windows Forms element in the left Toolbox pane to place your control element on the form (with drag&drop).

Visual Studio generates an Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) that contains the GUI form settings. Save this code into the file C:\PS\Script\MainWindow.xaml. Open this file using Notepad and remove the string:

x:Class="test.MainWindow”

Now you can read this XAML code from your PowerShell script and display a Windows Form.

Load the WPF assembly:

Add-Type -AssemblyName PresentationFramework

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms

[xml]$XAML = Get-Content "C:\ps\gui\mainwindow.xaml"

$XAML.Window.RemoveAttribute('x:Class')

$XAML.Window.RemoveAttribute('mc:Ignorable')

$XAMLReader = New-Object System.Xml.XmlNodeReader $XAML

$MainWindow = [Windows.Markup.XamlReader]::Load($XAMLReader)

$XAML.SelectNodes("//*[@Name]") | %{Set-Variable -Name ($_.Name) -Value $MainWindow.FindName($_.Name)}

Show the form:

$xamGUI.ShowDialog()

Add event handlers for contol elements

Now add some event handlers for contol elements. For example, I want a message to appear when I click OK button.

1. In the XAML file, set a name for the OK button, for example:

   Name="OkButton"

   

2. Add logic to your PowerShell script:

   # Define the event handler
   
   function OnOkButtonClick {
   
   $null = [System.Windows.MessageBox]::Show("Button OK clicked!")
   
   }
   
   # Add the event handler to the "OK" button
   
   $OkButton = $MainWindow.FindName("OkButton")
   
   $OkButton.Add_Click({ OnOkButtonClick })
   
   # Show the window
   
   $MainWindow.ShowDialog() | Out-Null

Check that the action from the OnOkButtonClick function is now performed when a button is clicked on the form.