Sometimes Write-Host gets a bad reputation. Lots of people will repeat inflammatory rhetoric that “Write-Host” kills puppies, and so on, but the only real problem with Write-Host is that people use it without knowing what it’s for. Write-Host is for writing to the console and only the console.

Other cmdlets like Write-Output are for writing to standard output which might be the console, or could be somewhere else down the pipeline. Write-Host’s output can’t be redirected to a log file, isn’t useful in unattended execution scenarios, and can’t be piped into another command. Lots of people who are new to PowerShell get into a habit of using Write-Host when they probably should have used Write-Output or something else instead. If you have someone you’re trying to train to stop using Write-Host when it’s not needed, consider this prank, just in time for April Fools Day.

There’s not much to it. Just add a couple of lines to their PowerShell profile.

$PSDefaultParameterValues.Add('write-host:foregroundcolor',{get-random $([system.enum]::getvalues([system.consolecolor]))})
$PSDefaultParameterValues.Add('write-host:backgroundcolor',{get-random $([system.enum]::getvalues([system.consolecolor]))})

This adds default values for the -BackgroundColor  and -ForegroundColor  parameters when Write-Host is called. If a script specifies a value for those parameters, those specific values will be used instead. If, instead, Write-Host is called without specifying values for the foreground and background color parameters, a random one will be used instead. It’ll look something like this.