Cause of Warning: PowerShell detected that you might be using a screen reader and has disabled PSReadLine for compatibility purposes
Steps
Launch PowerShell 7 on Windows 10.
Actual result
PowerShell 7.0.0
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
https://aka.ms/powershell
Type 'help' to get help.
Warning: PowerShell detected that you might be using a screen reader and has disabled PSReadLine for compatibility purposes. If you want to re-enable it, run 'Import-Module PSReadLine'.
Expected result
No warning is displayed when PowerShell starts, since I am not using a screen reader.
Workaround
Run the specified command Import-Module PSReadLine
. I haven't run this since I first want to understand why the warning is here.
$PSVersionTable
output:
Name Value
---- -----
PSVersion 7.0.0
PSEdition Core
GitCommitId 7.0.0
OS Microsoft Windows 10.0.18362
Platform Win32NT
PSCompatibleVersions {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0…}
PSRemotingProtocolVersion 2.3
SerializationVersion 1.1.0.1
WSManStackVersion 3.0
Additional info
I have Visual Studio 2017, 2019 installed
Solution 1:
Set the following registry key:
Windows Registry
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Accessibility\Blind Access\On
to value 0
and reboot.
I discovered this alternative solution via the issue mentioned by @Znatz.
Source
Solution 2:
There is a fix for this error.
Powershell issue #11751
Create a .ps1 file, paste the following code and run it with powershell.
Add-Type -TypeDefinition '
using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
public static class ScreenReaderFixUtil
{
public static bool IsScreenReaderActive()
{
var ptr = IntPtr.Zero;
try
{
ptr = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(sizeof(int));
int hr = Interop.SystemParametersInfo(
Interop.SPI_GETSCREENREADER,
sizeof(int),
ptr,
0);
if (hr == 0)
{
throw new Win32Exception(Marshal.GetLastWin32Error());
}
return Marshal.ReadInt32(ptr) != 0;
}
finally
{
if (ptr != IntPtr.Zero)
{
Marshal.FreeHGlobal(ptr);
}
}
}
public static void SetScreenReaderActiveStatus(bool isActive)
{
int hr = Interop.SystemParametersInfo(
Interop.SPI_SETSCREENREADER,
isActive ? 1u : 0u,
IntPtr.Zero,
Interop.SPIF_SENDCHANGE);
if (hr == 0)
{
throw new Win32Exception(Marshal.GetLastWin32Error());
}
}
private static class Interop
{
public const int SPIF_SENDCHANGE = 0x0002;
public const int SPI_GETSCREENREADER = 0x0046;
public const int SPI_SETSCREENREADER = 0x0047;
[DllImport("user32", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
public static extern int SystemParametersInfo(
uint uiAction,
uint uiParam,
IntPtr pvParam,
uint fWinIni);
}
}'
if ([ScreenReaderFixUtil]::IsScreenReaderActive()) {
[ScreenReaderFixUtil]::SetScreenReaderActiveStatus($false)
}