When the words “Package Manager” are mentioned, it is redolent of the mature and famous Linux tools such as apt for Debian based systems, zypper for OpenSUSE, and yum|dnf for RedHat-based distributions. In conjunction with that, Windows users requested a native package manager developed by Microsft that they can jump on to save their time while installing software and tools. It seems that the plea was heard and something was done about it.

Microsoft has developed winget to help accomplish this feature in the future and what is more amazing about it is that it is an opensource project. Moreover, Windows Package Manager (winget) is a tool designed to help you quickly and easily discover and install those tools that make your PC environment special. By using the Windows Package Manager, from one command, you can install your favorite tool.

Features

In addition to other goodies, winget exposes the following commands and options for the preview.

  • install Installs the given application
  • show Shows info about an application
  • source Manage sources of applications
  • search Find and show basic info of apps
  • hash Helper to hash installer files
  • validate Validates a manifest file
  • –help Provides command line help
  • –info Provides addition data, helpful for troubleshooting
  • –version Provides the version of the client

Install winget

The client is distributed within the App Installer package. While this package is pre-installed on Windows, the client will not be made generally available during the Preview period. In order to get automatic updates from the Microsoft Store that contain the client, one must do one of the following:

Personally, I installed Windows Desktop App Installer package located in the release folder of the winget repository.

To install “winget” directly, head over to winget preview files and download the Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller .appxbundle file then click on it to install it. Click on “Update“

<img alt="" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/echo/Update-ms-resource-1.png" data-ez ezimgfmt="rs rscb8 src ng ngcb8 srcset" src="data:image/svg xml,”>

Using winget

winget cli tool can be used with both commandline (cmd) or PowerShell. Launch either of the two as “Administrator” and you are ready to issue the commands below:

  • install: Installs the given application
  • show: Shows info about an application
  • source: Adds, removes and updates the Windows Package Manager repositories accessed by the winget tool
  • search: Find and show basic info of apps
  • hash: Helper to hash installer files. It generates the SHA256 hash for the installer
  • validate: Validates a manifest file for submission to the Windows Package Manager repository
  • help: Displays help for the winget tool commands.

Illustrations shown below

In this section, we are going to see examples of using the winget cli tool.

Search for an application

To see if your applicaction is found in the repositories, issue the command below to search for an application you would wish to install.

winget search notepad
<img alt="" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/echo/winget-searh-notepad.png" data-ez ezimgfmt="rs rscb8 src ng ngcb8 srcset" src="data:image/svg xml,”>

Install an application

Issue the command below to install an application.

winget install Notepad
<img alt="" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/echo/winget-install-notepad.png" data-ez ezimgfmt="rs rscb8 src ng ngcb8 srcset" src="data:image/svg xml,”>

Check an application’s information

Issue the command below to see more information about a given application.

winget show Notepad
<img alt="" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/echo/winget-show-notepad.png" data-ez ezimgfmt="rs rscb8 src ng ngcb8 srcset" src="data:image/svg xml,”>

After installation, confirm that your application is installed successfully. Simply search for it in Windows

<img alt="" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/echo/winget-confirm-notepadplus.png" data-ez ezimgfmt="rs rscb8 src ng ngcb8 srcset" src="data:image/svg xml,”>

And there it is!

References:

There we are at last and we now have winget installed. To continue with the magic, simply start off your PowerShell | Comandline, search for your applications, and get them installed as wonderfully as we have seen. At least we can now live in the terminal while in our Windows Operating Systems. To sum up, thank you for visiting and spending your time on the blog. For more fun, check the guides shared below:

Manage Windows Applications Using Chocolatey Software Management Tool

Install Windows Terminal on Windows 10 | Server 2019

How To Install GitHub CLI (gh) on Linux | Windows

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