How to run gh auth login --with-token on Windows with PowerShell? #8616

The PowerShell shape does work, but the syntax is PowerShell-specific.

I just verified that piping a value into:

gh auth login --with-token

is accepted as standard input by gh on Windows PowerShell; with a dummy token it failed normally with a 401, which means the stdin wiring itself is fine.

So the practical forms are:

If the token is already in an environment variable:

$env:GH_TOKEN | gh auth login --with-token

If it is in a file:

Get-Content .\mytoken.txt | gh auth login --with-token

The main thing to avoid is mixing cmd redirection syntax into PowerShell.

So my short answer would be:

• yes, gh auth login --with-token works in PowerShell
• use PowerShell piping (|) or Get-Content, not cmd /c ... < ...
• you do not need to pass - after --with-token

The errors are coming from PowerShell, not from gh itself:

• echo ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }} | gh auth login --with-token — ${{ ... }} is Actions-expression syntax; PowerShell tries to parse it and mis-binds the arguments, which is why you get "A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument 'auth'".
• cmd /c "gh auth login --with-token < $(echo ***)" — PowerShell has no < stdin redirection, so cmd can't find the "file".

--with-token simply reads the token from standard input (see the gh auth login manual: https://cli.github.com/manual/gh_auth_login), so pipe a value into it the PowerShell way:

# from an environment variable
$env:GH_TOKEN | gh auth login --with-token

# or from a file
Get-Content .\token.txt | gh auth login --with-token

If this is inside GitHub Actions (your ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }} suggests so), the cleanest fix is to not call gh auth login at all — gh automatically uses the GH_TOKEN / GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable (run gh help environment). Set it on the step and skip the login entirely:

- shell: pwsh
  env:
    GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}   # or ${{ github.token }}
  run: gh pr list        # any gh command — no login step needed

A couple of notes:

• The token still needs the right scopes for whatever you call.
• Passing it through env: keeps the secret off the command line, which also sidesteps the quoting/expansion problem you hit in the first place.

PowerShell does not support bash-style < input redirection, which is why both attempts fail on Windows runners and locally.

Recommended: pipe the token (works in PowerShell)

$env:GH_TOKEN = "${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}"
echo $env:GH_TOKEN | gh auth login --with-token

Or inline in a workflow step:

- name: Authenticate gh
  shell: pwsh
  env:
    GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}
  run: echo $env:GH_TOKEN | gh auth login --with-token

Alternative: here-string (also PowerShell-native)

@"
${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}
"@ | gh auth login --with-token

What not to do on Windows

• gh auth login --with-token < token.txt — < is not a valid PowerShell redirection operator for external commands
• cmd /c "gh auth login --with-token < ..." — fragile in CI and breaks with special characters in tokens

Verify auth

gh auth status
gh api user --jq .login

Tip for GitHub Actions on windows-latest

Set shell: pwsh explicitly on the step (the default shell on Windows runners is PowerShell). Avoid mixing bash syntax on Windows jobs unless you use shell: bash and a bash-compatible heredoc.

Hope that unblocks your workflow — this is the pattern I use on Windows locally as well.