Set Windows PowerShell to UTF-8 Encoding to Fix GBK Codec Can Not Encode Character Error

The default encoding of powershell is not utf-8, when you are running python code using it, you may get gbk codec cannot encode character error.

To fix this error, we should make powershell support utf-8 encoding. In this tutorial, we will introduce you how to do.

There are two methods to set powershell to support utf-8 encoding, temporary and permanent. We will introduce them one by one.

Get powershell default encoding.

We can run code below in powershell to get the its default encoding.

[psobject].Assembly.GetTypes() | Where-Object { $_.Name -eq 'ClrFacade'} |
  ForEach-Object {
    $_.GetMethod('GetDefaultEncoding', [System.Reflection.BindingFlags]'nonpublic,static').Invoke($null, @())
  }

Then you will get this result.

As to us, the default encoding of powershell is gb2312.

Set powershell encoding to utf-8 temporarily

You can run code below in powershell to make powershell encoding to utf-8.

PS C:\> $OutputEncoding = [System.Console]::OutputEncoding = [System.Console]::InputEncoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
PS C:\> $PSDefaultParameterValues['*:Encoding'] = 'utf8'

Then you will find you current powershell terminal can output utf-8 characters.

However, if you open a new powershell terminal, you will find powershell will not support utf-8 again.