By default, when you redirect the output of a command to a file or pipe it into something else in PowerShell, the encoding is UTF-16, which isn't useful. I'm looking to change it to UTF-8.
It can be done on a case-by-case basis by replacing the >foo.txt syntax with | out-file foo.txt -encoding utf8 but this is awkward to have to repeat every time.
The persistent way to set things in PowerShell is to put them in \Users\me\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1; I've verified that this file is indeed executed on startup.
It has been said that the output encoding can be set with $PSDefaultParameterValues = @{'Out-File:Encoding' = 'utf8'} but I've tried this and it had no effect.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2006/12/11/outputencoding-to-the-rescue/ which talks about $OutputEncoding looks at first glance as though it should be relevant, but then it talks about output being encoded in ASCII, which is not what's actually happening.
How do you set PowerShell to use UTF-8?