How to find cmdlet aliases in PowerShell

Aliases in PowerShell are alternate names given to commands. You can think of them as nicknames for commands. For example, pwd is an alias of Get-Location, and rm is an alias for Remove-Item. Aliases are useful for shortening the name of a command, or to provide a different name that may be more familiar to the user.

Get the aliases for all PowerShell cmdlets

The Get-Alias cmdlet is used to display all the aliases that are available in the current PowerShell session:

Get-Alias
Output
CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------
Alias           ? -> Where-Object
Alias           % -> ForEach-Object
Alias           ac -> Add-Content
Alias           cat -> Get-Content
Alias           cd -> Set-Location
Alias           chdir -> Set-Location
Alias           clc -> Clear-Content
Alias           clear -> Clear-Host
Alias           clhy -> Clear-History
Alias           cli -> Clear-Item
Alias           clp -> Clear-ItemProperty
Alias           cls -> Clear-Host
Alias           clv -> Clear-Variable
Alias           cnsn -> Connect-PSSession
Alias           compare -> Compare-Object
Alias           copy -> Copy-Item
Alias           cp -> Copy-Item
Alias           cpi -> Copy-Item

. . .

Check the alias for a specific PowerShell cmdlet

To check the alias for a specific cmdlet, pass the cmdlet name to the -Definition parameter as shown below:

Get-Alias -Definition New-Item
Output
CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------
Alias           ni -> New-Item

As you can see from the above output, ni is the alias for New-Item in this case.

Thanks for reading, and happy scripting!