# Windows PowerShell UTF-8 Setup

Windows PowerShell 5.1 may read UTF-8 files without a byte order mark as the legacy Windows ANSI code page. When that happens, Unicode text such as gitmoji appears as mojibake:

```text
🤖
```

The file itself can still be valid UTF-8. The problem is usually the decoding choice made by `Get-Content`.

## Fix for the Current User

Add UTF-8 defaults to your Windows PowerShell profile:

```powershell
$PSDefaultParameterValues['Get-Content:Encoding'] = 'UTF8'
$PSDefaultParameterValues['Set-Content:Encoding'] = 'UTF8'
$PSDefaultParameterValues['Add-Content:Encoding'] = 'UTF8'
$PSDefaultParameterValues['Out-File:Encoding'] = 'UTF8'

[Console]::OutputEncoding = [System.Text.UTF8Encoding]::new()
$OutputEncoding = [System.Text.UTF8Encoding]::new()
```

The profile path for Windows PowerShell is usually:

```powershell
$PROFILE
```

On this machine it is:

```text
C:\g4b\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
```

Restart PowerShell after editing the profile.

## One-Off Command

For a single read, pass the encoding explicitly:

```powershell
Get-Content -Encoding UTF8 docs\workpad\specs\commit-conventions.md
```

## PowerShell 7

PowerShell 7 (`pwsh`) defaults to UTF-8 more consistently than Windows PowerShell 5.1. If available, using `pwsh` is usually the cleaner long-term fix.

## What This Does Not Change

Repo files such as `.gitattributes` can tell Git how to handle text normalization, but they do not force Windows PowerShell 5.1 to decode files as UTF-8. The shell profile or explicit `-Encoding UTF8` is still needed for `Get-Content`.