WinGet is one of the best additions to Windows in a long time. For years, power users had been clamoring for a proper package manager along the lines of what Linux offers, and options did exist from third-parties, such as Chocolatey. But WinGet is built in, and because of that, it's very widely supported and has a ton of apps available.

But not everyone wants to use the command line to install apps, so there's some demand for a way to access WinGet using a more typical GUI, leading to tools such as UniGetUI. But you don't need to search for third-party options to use WinGet in a more friendly way. Microsoft already makes a GUI for WinGet, and like so many great Microsoft tools, it's part of PowerToys.

Easily find Winget apps

It's built into Command Palette

Typically, installing an app from WinGet would require you to first open Windows Terminal and then input a comnmand along the lines of winget search firefox, which would then return a list of results with full package names, which you can then use with the winget install command. Alternatively, a tool like UniGetUI would let you search for apps and install them using your mouse, which may be more intuitive, but is generally slower.

Thee ability to install WinGet apps in PowerToys is built into Command Palette, which means you can use it entirely with your keyboard, speeding up the process. It's made even faster because you can also summon Command Palette in an instant with the designated keyboard shortcut, and if you want to save even more time, you can create a hotkey for the WinGet extension in Command Palette, so you don't even have to go through the main search UI. By using the keyboard for every part of the process and reducing the steps necessary to get to results, finding and installing apps becomes way faster, at least in theory (we'll get to that in a second).

Importantly, that speed boost doesn't come at the expense of usability or a nice, user-friendly UI. When you launch the WinGet extension, you can search for apps using their names, and results appear in a list that you can navigate using the mouse or keyboard. You can select an item to see more information about a package, which is much more informative than what WinGet shows you with a typical search. This makes it easier to narrow down search results and ensure you're getting the right thing, while also now being usable with a mouse if you prefer.

There are some problems

Not quite the full WinGet experience

As great as it is to have WinGet built into Command Palette and PowerToys as a whole, there are some notable problems with the implementation right now. Most notably, there's a problem with searches that kind of undoes all the speed benefits I just mentioned above. When you type in the search bar for the WinGet extension in Command Palette, it seems like the app is sending every character you enter as a query, then waiting for results to be returned from search.

What this means is you'll see useless results for a while before your final query is properly processed. As typed, I noticed results loiading for several seconds until they finally matches what I had entered, which made the experience far too frustrating. Initially, I thought the search engine was just broken until I realized it was just searching for the letter F. This feels like it should be a relatively easy fix: either wait a few milliseconds before processing a query, or interrupt a query whenever the search terms change. Hopefully, that rolls in sooner rather than later.

It's also worth noting this isn't a full WinGet replacement. It's only meant to install apps and Command Palette extensions, so you can't update or uninstall apps this way. Of course, Command Palette offers the option to uninstall apps on its own, but that just redirects you to the Settings app, which is an unnecessary hoop to jump through. Something that relies on WinGet's uninstall command would be welcome, though maybe not the biggest priority.

The PowerToys advantage

No tool is ever alone

Whenever we talk about a tool that's built into PowerToys, there's a big inherent advantage to that tool over any competitor. PowerToys is a suite of tools sanctioned and published by Microsoft, even if it's created with the help of the open-source community, so that alone lends it a lot of credibility and trustworthiness.

More importantly, though, PowerToys is a suite containing a lot of incredibly useful tools, and it's adding more of them all the time. If you want to make the most of your Windows 11 PC, this single app can do a lot for you, so it can save you a lot of hassle with setting up individual apps. Command Palette alone (where you can access WinGet) is home to a ton more functionality, including launching apps, opening websites, searching the web, running calculations, and more. Launchers like this are huge time savers.

Add to that tools like FancyZones for advanced window management, PowerRename for complex renaming capabilities in bulk, Image Resizer for processing large sets of images, Workspaces for saving sets of apps to launch all at once, and more, and you've removed the need to install a good handful of apps already.

For that reason, even with its downsides, Command Palette may still be the best tool for using WinGet on your PC with a GUI. And if search is improved, there's no contest.

PowerToys keeps growing

If Microsoft does implement the necessary improvements to the WinGet extension in Command Palette, it would undoubtedly be the best way to find and install WinGet apps, and it seems like Microsoft and the community supporting PowerToys are keen on removing the need for third-party tools as much as possible. As it stands, it's a little hard to recommend specifically for this purpose, but there is a lot of good stuff in PowerToys that makes it worth a shot.