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May 22, 2025
The key investment areas for Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell in 2025 are quality and security. We’ve also made meaningful efforts to improve the overall user experience. In parallel, we’ve enhanced the quality and performance of Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell responses in Copilot, ensuring a more reliable user experience. We encourage you to try out the improved Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell in the Copilot experience and see how it can help streamline your Azure workflows.
At Microsoft Build 2025, we’re excited to announce several new capabilities aligned with these priorities:
- Improvements in quality and security.
- Enhancements to user experience.
- Ongoing improvements to Copilot’s response quality and performance.
Improvements in quality and security
Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell Long Term Support (LTS) releases support
In November 2024, Azure PowerShell became the first to introduce both Standard Term Support (STS) and Long-Term Support (LTS) versions, providing users with more flexibility in managing their tools. At Microsoft Build 2025, we are excited to announce that Azure CLI now also supports both STS and LTS release models. This allows users to choose the version that best fits their project needs, whether they prefer the stability of LTS releases or want to stay up to date with the latest features in STS releases. Users can continue using an LTS version until the next LTS becomes available or choose to upgrade more frequently with STS versions.
To learn more about the definitions and support timelines for Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell STS and LTS versions, please refer to the following documentation:
- Azure CLI lifecycle and support | Microsoft Learn
- Azure PowerShell support lifecycle | Microsoft Learn
Users can choose between the Long-Term Support (LTS) and Short-Term Support (STS) versions of Azure CLI based on their specific needs. It is important to understand the trade-offs:
- LTS versions provide a stable and predictable environment with a support cycle of up to 12 months, making them ideal for scenarios where stability and minimal maintenance are priorities.
- STS versions, on the other hand, offer access to the latest features and more frequent bug fixes. However, this comes with the potential need for more frequent script updates as changes are introduced with each release.
It is also worth noting that platforms such as Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions typically default to using newer CLI versions. That said, users still have the option to pin to a specific version if greater consistency is required in their CI/CD pipelines.
When using Azure CLI to deploy services like Azure Functions within CI/CD workflows, the actual CLI version in use will depend on the version selected by the pipeline environment (e.g., GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps), and it is recommended to verify or explicitly set the version to align with your deployment requirements.
SecureString update for Azure PowerShell
Our team is gradually transitioning to using SecureString for tokens, account keys, and secrets, replacing the traditional string types. In November 2024, we offered an opt-in method for the Get-AzAccessToken cmdlet. At the 2025 Build event, we’ve made this option mandatory, which is a breaking change:
Get-AzAccessToken
Get-AzAccessToken
Token : System.Security.SecureString
ExpiresOn : 5/13/2025 1:09:15 AM +00:00
TenantId : 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
UserId : user@mail.com
Type : Bearer
In 2026, we plan to implement this secure method in more commands, converting all keys, tokens, and similar data from string types to SecureString. Please continue to pay attention to our upcoming breaking changes documentation.
Install Azure PowerShell from Microsoft Artifact Registry (MAR)
Installing Azure PowerShell from Microsoft Artifact Registry (MAR) brings several key advantages for enterprise users, particularly in terms of security, performance, and simplified artifact management.
Stronger Security and Supply Chain Integrity
Microsoft Artifact Registry (MAR) enhances security by ensuring only Microsoft can publish official packages, eliminating risks like name squatting. It also improves software supply chain integrity by offering greater transparency and control over artifact provenance.
Faster and More Reliable Delivery
By caching Az modules in your own ACR instances with MAR as an upstream source, customers benefit from faster downloads and higher reliability, especially within the Azure network.
You can try installing Azure PowerShell from MAR using the following PowerShell command:
$acrUrl = ‘https://mcr.microsoft.com’
Register-PSResourceRepository -Name MAR -Uri $acrUrl -ApiVersion ContainerRegistry
Install-PSResource -Name Az -Repository MAR
For detailed installation instructions and prerequisites, refer to the official documentation:
Optimize the installation of Azure PowerShell | Microsoft Learn
Enhancements to user experience
Azure PowerShell Enhancements at Microsoft Build 2025
As part of the Microsoft Build 2025 announcements, Azure PowerShell has introduced several significant improvements to enhance usability, automation flexibility, and overall user experience.
Real-Time Progress Bar for Long-Running Operations
Cmdlets that perform long-running operations now display a real-time progress bar, offering users clear visual feedback during execution.
Smarter Output Formatting Based on Result Count
Output formatting is now dynamically adjusted based on the number of results returned:
- A detailed list view is shown when a single result is returned, helping users quickly understand the full details.
- A table view is presented when multiple results are returned, providing a concise summary that’s easier to scan.
JSON-Based Resource Creation for Improved Automation
Azure PowerShell now supports creating resources using raw JSON input, making it easier to integrate with infrastructure-as-code (IaC) pipelines. When this feature is enabled (by default in Azure environments), applicable cmdlets accept:
- JSON strings directly via *ViaJsonString
- External JSON files via *ViaJsonFilePath
This capability streamlines scripting and automation, especially for users managing complex configurations.
We’re always looking for feedback, so try the new features and let us know what you think.
Improved for custom and disconnected clouds: Azure CLI now reads extended ARM metadata
In disconnected environments like national clouds, air-gapped setups, or Azure Stack, customers often define their own cloud configurations, including custom dataplane endpoints. However, older versions of Azure CLI and its extensions relied heavily on hardcoded endpoint values based only on the cloud name, limiting functionality in these isolated environments.
To address this, Azure CLI now supports reading richer cloud metadata from Azure Resource Manager (ARM) using API version 2022-09-01. This metadata includes extended data plane endpoints, such as those for Arc-enabled services and private registries previously unavailable in older API versions.
When running az cloud register with the —endpoint-resource-manager flag, Azure CLI automatically parses and loads these custom endpoints into its runtime context. All extensions, like connectedk8s, k8s-configuration, and others, can now dynamically use accurate, environment-specific endpoints without needing hardcoded logic.
Key Benefits:
- Improved Support for Custom Clouds: Enables more reliable automation and compatibility with Azure Local.
- Increased Security and Maintainability: Removes the need for manually hardcoding endpoints.
- Unified Extension Behavior: Ensures consistent behavior across CLI and its extensions using centrally managed metadata.
Try it out:
Register cloud
az cloud register -n myCloud –endpoint-resource-manager https://management.azure.com/
Check cloud
az cloud show -n myCloud
For the original implementation, please refer to https://github.com/Azure/azure-cli/pull/30682.
Azure PowerShell WAM authentication update
Since Azure PowerShell 12.0.0, Azure PowerShell supports Web Authentication Manager (WAM) as the default authentication mechanism. Using Web Account Manager (WAM) for authentication in Azure enhances security through its built-in identity broker and default system browser integration. It also delivers a faster and more seamless sign-in experience. All major blockers have been resolved, and we are actively working on the pending issues.
For detailed announcements on specific issues, please refer to the WAM issues and Workarounds issue.
We encourage users to enable WAM functionality using the command:
Update-AzConfig -EnableLoginByWam $true.
under Windows operating systems to ensure security. If you encounter issues, please report them in Issues · Azure/azure-powershell.
Improve Copilot’s response quality and performance
Azure CLI/PS enhancement with Copilot in Azure
In the first half of 2025, we improved the knowledge of Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell commands for Azure Copilot end-to-end scenarios based on best practices to answer questions related to commands and scripts.
In the past six months, we have optimized the following scenarios:
- Introduced Azure concept documents to RAG to provide more accurate and comprehensive answers.
- Improved the accuracy and relevance of knowledge retrieval query and chunking strategies
- Support more accurate rejection of the out-of-scope questions.
AI Shell brings AI to the command line, enabling natural conversations with language models and customizable workflows. AI Shell is in public preview and allows you to access Copilot in Azure. All the optimizations apply to AI Shell. For more information about AI Shell releases, see: AI Shell
To learn more about Microsoft Copilot for Azure and how it can help you, visit: Microsoft Copilot for Azure
Breaking Changes
You can find the latest breaking change guidance documents at the links below. To learn more about the breaking changes, ensure your environment is ready to install the newest version of Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell, see the release notes and migration guides.
Azure CLI: Release notes & updates – Azure CLI | Microsoft Learn
Azure PowerShell: Migration guide for Az 14.0.0 | Microsoft Learn
Milestone timelines:
Thank you for using the Azure command-line tools. We look forward to continuing to improve your experience. We hope you enjoy Microsoft Build and all the great work released this week. We’d love to hear your feedback, so feel free to reach out anytime.
- GitHub:
o https://github.com/Azure/azure-cli
o https://github.com/Azure/azure-powershell
- Let’s stay in touch on X (Twitter) : @azureposh @AzureCli