You installed a PowerShell module on your machine and used it for a long time, and suddenly… It no longer connects, shows warnings that some commands are deprecated, and now what?! In this blog post, I will show you how to update all your modules to the latest version and remove unused older versions.

Requirements

The script should be able to update all modules to the latest version, but it should also update them to the latest prerelease version if specified. It should also show the current version and the new version when updated. And to keep things nice and tidy, it should also remove any previous versions.

Update PowerShellget module

The script uses functions from a newer Powershellget module (Version 2.2.5). The built-in/default version of Powershellget 1.0.0.1 doesn’t have these. To update to the more recent version, you can follow these steps:

Open a PowerShell prompt (v5 or v7) as Administrator and run these lines below one at a time (It could prompt Y/N for installing the NuGet provider):

Install-Module PowerShellGet -AllowClobber -Force
Remove-Module Powershellget
Remove-Module PackageManagement
Import-Module Powershellget -MinimumVersion 2.2.5

Note: Close this PowerShell session you used to update PowerShellget before running the script below.

Running the script

When running the script with no parameter, it will update all modules to the latest production version and remove older versions, if any.  It retrieves the information of 63 updates at a time until all modules are checked for more recent versions at the start of the script. (Limit of PSGallery searching using Find-Module)

If available, the -AllowPreRelease parameter will update all modules to the latest Prerelease version and the latest Production version if not. The -Whatif parameter will only check and output to screen if it would have updated or uninstalled a module.

The -Name parameter can be used to update only specific modules, either by name or enclosed by wildcard (*). For example, running Update-Modules -Name *dsc* will update all modules with DSC at any position in the name.

Note: The script requires running it as an Administrator.
Warning: Updating all your modules to the PreRelease version could break things for you!

The output of the script when starting the Update-Modules function:

The output of the script when removing older versions:

Example output stating the updated modules at the end of the script:

It will show an error in red if the module can’t be updated. It will also report if modules can’t be updated because they are in use:

or

Note: If you have a lot of modules… This could take a while 🙂

The script

Below is the script. Save it to a location (c:\scripts, for example) and add it to your PowerShell profile by:

notepad $profile
add ". c:\scripts\Update-modules.ps1"
quit/save and start new PowerShell session and run Update-Modules

If you don’t add it to your PowerShell profile, you can run it by:

. .\update-modules.ps1
update-modules

Thanks, ScrambledBrain, for updating the script through a pull request on GitHub twice. 🙂

function Update-Modules {
	param (
		[switch]$AllowPrerelease,
		[string]$Name = '*',
		[switch]$WhatIf
	)
	
	# Test admin privileges without using -Requires RunAsAdministrator,
	# which causes a nasty error message, if trying to load the function within a PS profile but without admin privileges
	if (-not ([Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal][Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()).IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole]"Administrator")) {
		Write-Warning ("Function {0} needs admin privileges. Break now." -f $MyInvocation.MyCommand)
		return
	}

	# Get all installed modules
	Write-Host ("Retrieving all installed modules ...") -ForegroundColor Green
	$CurrentModules = Get-InstalledModule -Name $Name -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object Name, Version | Sort-Object Name

	if (-not $CurrentModules) {
		Write-Host ("No modules found.") -ForegroundColor Gray
		return
	}
	else {
		$ModulesCount = $CurrentModules.Name.Count
		$DigitsLength = $ModulesCount.ToString().Length
		Write-Host ("{0} modules found." -f $ModulesCount) -ForegroundColor Gray
	}

	# Show status of AllowPrerelease Switch
	''
	if ($AllowPrerelease) {
		Write-Host ("Updating installed modules to the latest PreRelease version ...") -ForegroundColor Green
	}
	else {
		Write-Host ("Updating installed modules to the latest Production version ...") -ForegroundColor Green
	}

	#Retrieve current versions of modules (63 at a time because of PSGallery limit) if $InstalledModules is greater than 0
	if ($CurrentModules.Count -gt 0) {
		$startnumber = 0
		$endnumber = 62
		$onlineversions = $null
		while ($CurrentModules.Count -gt $onlineversions.Count) {
			Write-Host ("Checking online versions for installed modules [{0}..{1}/{2}]" -f $startnumber, $endnumber, $CurrentModules.Count) -ForegroundColor Green
			$currentversions = Find-Module -Name $CurrentModules.name[$startnumber..$endnumber]
			$startnumber = $startnumber + 63
			$endnumber = $endnumber + 63
			$onlineversions = $onlineversions + $currentversions
		}
	}
	else {
		Write-Warning ("No modules were found to check for updates, please check your NameFilter. Exiting...")
		return
	}

	# Loop through the installed modules and update them if a newer version is available
	$i = 0
	foreach ($Module in $CurrentModules) {
		$i++
		$Counter = ("[{0,$DigitsLength}/{1,$DigitsLength}]" -f $i, $ModulesCount)
		$CounterLength = $Counter.Length
		Write-Host ('{0} Checking for updated version of module {1} ...' -f $Counter, $Module.Name) -ForegroundColor Green
		try {
			$latest = $onlineversions | Where-Object name -eq $module.Name -ErrorAction Stop
			if ([version]$Module.Version -lt [version]$latest.version) {
				Update-Module -Name $Module.Name -AllowPrerelease:$AllowPrerelease -AcceptLicense -Scope:AllUsers -Force:$True -ErrorAction Stop -WhatIf:$WhatIf.IsPresent
			}
		}
		catch {
			Write-Host ("{0$CounterLength} Error updating module {1}!" -f ' ', $Module.Name) -ForegroundColor Red
		}

		# Retrieve newest version number and remove old(er) version(s) if any
		$AllVersions = Get-InstalledModule -Name $Module.Name -AllVersions | Sort-Object PublishedDate -Descending
		$MostRecentVersion = $AllVersions[0].Version
		if ($AllVersions.Count -gt 1 ) {
			Foreach ($Version in $AllVersions) {
				if ($Version.Version -ne $MostRecentVersion) {
					try {
						Write-Host ("{0,$CounterLength} Uninstalling previous version {1} of module {2} ..." -f ' ', $Version.Version, $Module.Name) -ForegroundColor Gray
						Uninstall-Module -Name $Module.Name -RequiredVersion $Version.Version -Force:$True -ErrorAction Stop -AllowPrerelease -WhatIf:$WhatIf.IsPresent
					}
					catch {
						Write-Warning ("{0,$CounterLength} Error uninstalling previous version {1} of module {2}!" -f ' ', $Version.Version, $Module.Name)
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}

	# Get the new module versions for comparing them to to previous one if updated
	$NewModules = Get-InstalledModule -Name $Name | Select-Object Name, Version | Sort-Object Name
	if ($NewModules) {
		''
		Write-Host ("List of updated modules:") -ForegroundColor Green
		$NoUpdatesFound = $true
		foreach ($Module in $NewModules) {
			$CurrentVersion = $CurrentModules | Where-Object Name -EQ $Module.Name
			if ($CurrentVersion.Version -notlike $Module.Version) {
				$NoUpdatesFound = $false
				Write-Host ("- Updated module {0} from version {1} to {2}" -f $Module.Name, $CurrentVersion.Version, $Module.Version) -ForegroundColor Green
			}
		}

		if ($NoUpdatesFound) {
			Write-Host ("No modules were updated.") -ForegroundColor Gray
		}
	}
}

Download the script(s) from GitHub here.