CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershelluwpwin-universal-app
JnLlnd
JnLlnd

Reputation: 195

Get the "plain" (end-user readable) name of UWP apps installed on a system

I'm using the following PowerShell script to retrieve and save to a text file the list of UWP apps on a system. It gets the ID, name (system name) and packagefamilyname.

In addition to the name, I'm looking for a way to retrieve the plain name of the app: for example, "OneNote" instead of "Microsoft.Office.OneNote". Ideally, this name would also be localized: for example, "Calculatrice" (on a French system) instead of "Microsoft.WindowsCalculator".

I found this list of info retrieved by Get-AppxPackage but nothing like an end-user readable name... I'm not very familiar this area of expertise. Any help would be appreciated.

$installedapps = get-AppxPackage
$ids = $null

foreach ($app in $installedapps)
{
  try
  {
    $ids = (Get-AppxPackageManifest $app -erroraction Stop).package.applications.application.id
  }
  catch
  {
    Write-Output "No Id's found for $($app.name)" 
  }
  foreach ($id in $ids)
  {
    $line = $app.Name + "`t" + $app.packagefamilyname + "!" + $id
    echo $line
    $line >> 'c:\temp\output.txt'
  }
}
write-host "Press any key to continue..."
[void][System.Console]::ReadKey($true)

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1290

Answers (2)

Ben Scott
Ben Scott

Reputation: 318

I spent some time looking for this today, and finally came up with a solution that doesn't involve a page of code, or digging around in files/registry/etc. Put the below two lines in a script or function, and it will return PoSh-friendly output which you can then pipe into ForEach-Object, Where-Object, Sort-Object, Export-CSV, etc.

$PkgMgr = [Windows.Management.Deployment.PackageManager,Windows.Web,ContentType=WindowsRuntime]::new()

$PkgMgr.FindPackages() | Select-Object DisplayName -ExpandProperty Id

The .FindPackages() method also has an overload which takes a Family Name, but the docs lead me to believe it can only accept exact names, not wildcard matches. So unless you know exactly what you are looking for, I am guessing it is best to retrieve the list of all packages, and then do your own searches on that list.

The docs do say that this will return packages for all users, and that it requires admin/elevated rights to run.

Upvotes: 2

Peter Torr
Peter Torr

Reputation: 12019

[Completed updated]

You can do this pretty easily in C#. You have to reference the correct WinMDs from the Windows SDK (the actual directories will change depending on SDK version):

  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\References\10.0.17134.0\Windows.Foundation.FoundationContract\3.0.0.0\Windows.Foundation.FoundationContract.winmd
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\References\10.0.17134.0\Windows.Foundation.UniversalApiContract\6.0.0.0\Windows.Foundation.UniversalApiContract.winmd

If you can't build a stand-alone EXE and just want pure PowerShell, you might be able to reference the WinMDs %systemroot%\system32\winmetadata. The code is pretty simple (I avoided await since I don't know if PowerShell has that):

// using Windows.Management.Deployment;

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    GetList();
}

static void GetList()
{
    var pm = new PackageManager();
    var packages = pm.FindPackagesForUser("");
    foreach (var package in packages)
    {
        var asyncResult = package.GetAppListEntriesAsync();
        while (asyncResult.Status != Windows.Foundation.AsyncStatus.Completed)
        {
            Thread.Sleep(10);
        }

        foreach (var app in asyncResult.GetResults())
        {
            Console.WriteLine(app.DisplayInfo.DisplayName);
        }
    }
}

Upvotes: 2

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