Winget is a built-in package manager for Windows 11 that allows you to easily install and update applications to their latest versions. In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to find applications, install them, update them, and even set up a recurring task to automatically update all your computer’s programs.
Step 1: Finding and Installing Applications with Winget
First, open a web browser and visit winget.run. This website lets you search for applications that can be installed using Winget. For this example, let’s install Neovim, a terminal-based text editor.
- Search for Neovim on the website.
- On the application page, you’ll see the terminal command required to install it. Click the Copy button to copy the command.
- Open your terminal by searching for Terminal in the Start menu.
- Paste the command into the terminal and press Enter.
Winget will now download and install the application. Once the process is complete, you’ll see that Neovim is successfully installed!
Step 2: Automatically Updating Programs with Winget
Winget can also be used to update all your Windows programs automatically. To set this up, we’ll use the Task Scheduler to create a recurring task.
- Open the Task Scheduler program. This tool manages all scheduled tasks on your computer. Be careful not to modify any existing tasks, but creating a new one is safe and easy.
- In the right sidebar, under Actions, click on Create Task.
- Give your task a name, such as Winget Updater Script.
- At the bottom of the window, make sure to enable Run with highest privileges. This will prevent any User Account Control (UAC) prompts from appearing during the upgrade process.
Setting Up the Task Schedule
- Go to the Triggers tab and create a schedule for your task. For example, you can set it to run weekly on Sunday at 5 PM.
- Click OK to save the trigger.
Creating the Script File
- Open Notepad or any text editor of your choice.
- Create a new file and type the following command: winget upgrade –all
- Save the file in a new folder on your C:\ drive. For example, create a folder named Tasks and save the file as winget_upgrader.bat. A .bat file is a script that can be executed by the Command Prompt and Task Scheduler.
Linking the Script to Task Scheduler
- Go back to Task Scheduler and navigate to the Actions tab.
- Click New and browse to the .bat file you just created.
- Click OK twice to finalize the task.
Your task has now been created and can be found under Task Scheduler Library.
Step 3: Testing the Task
To ensure everything works correctly, you can manually run the task:
- Right-click on the task in Task Scheduler and select Run.
- This will execute the script and begin updating all your programs automatically.
Conclusion
That’s it! You’ve learned how to use Winget to install and update applications on Windows 11, as well as how to set up a recurring task to keep all your programs up to date. I hope you found this guide helpful!