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Re: My Windows 11 tribulations or how I spent my summer



A recent article on the XDA developers' website offers a helpful gloss on one of the themes of this
thread: the tedium of installing software on a new Windows 11 machine. The piece -- https://www.xda-developers.com/made-simple-script-install-all-apps-new-pc-using-winget-you-can-make-your-own/
-- provides a template for a PowerShell script that uses winget to automate the installation
process. All that's required of the user is to edit the template to include the package ID for each
app you want the script to install. You can obtain the package IDs of your installed software with
the "winget list" command, but a cleaner, more readable listing can be obtained by
exporting the package names to a .json file with a command like:

winget export -o d:\path\MyApps.json --accept-source-agreements

Adjust the path and filename as desired; be sure to retain the .json extension. Read the .json file
in any text editor.

I used the template to create a PowerShell installation script for myself, listing several
already-installed packages and a couple of new ones that I was interested in adding. I ran the
script in a PowerShell session with administrator privileges, and the results were encouraging. The
script accurately identified the software packages that were already installed, and installed the
new ones without complaint. So this looks like a fine way to automate a good chunk of the process of
replicating a Win 11 setup on a new computer.

-- 
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxxxx