Winget: The best way to keep Windows apps updated

For a little more than a year, I’ve been working with winget daily to monitor and maintain my Windows 10 and 11 PCs. For those not already in the know, winget is the built-in,

PowerShell-based interface to Microsoft’s Windows Package Manager service.Winget is designed to enable “users to discover, install, upgrade, remove and configure applications

on Windows 10 and 11 computers,” according to Microsoft Learn. In my experience, winget is helpful for checking and updating most applications that run on Windows.Please note:

winget is included with Windows 10 version 1709 and later and all versions of Windows 11 as the App Installer. If you’re running an earlier version of Windows 10, visit the

winget home page at GitHub. There, click the Latest link under “Releases” at right, and download an item named “Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller...msixbundle” (the missing

characters identify Microsoft Store apps). Double-click on this item to install it. (Don’t worry: if you do this on a newer Windows version it will inform you, “The App

Installer is already installed.”)Exploring a PC with wingetUsing winget starts with opening a PowerShell window with administrator permissions: press Windows key + X and then

pick PowerShell (Admin) or Terminal (Admin) from the pop-up menu. Given that winget is a PowerShell command, it uses straightforward PowerShell syntax to provide information or

perform actions.Winget tells you about itself if you enter the command:winget --info As shown in Figure 1, this displays the version of Windows Package Manager that’s running,

along with system and OS info, the log file location, and links to various winget information resources. Helpful, but not terribly interesting. Ed Tittel/IDG Figure 1: The winget

--info command shows Windows Package Manager and OS version, its supporting package ID and version, log file location, and more. (Click image to enlarge it.) Winget also supports

two information display subcommands. The list subcommand shows what’s currently installed on the target PC. The show subcommand searches the online database of available package

manifests to show you what information is known about resulting search hits. With no qualifiers or queries, winget list shows a list of every item installed on your PC (225 items

on my production PC; 218 items on one of my Windows 11 Dev Channel test PCs). It includes all standard executables and Microsoft Store apps in this count.Winget show doesn’t work

unless you provide it with a search string of some kind. It’s normally used to search for specific packages, or to see if they exist. Try it out with search strings like