winget is the command-line client for Windows Package Manager, Microsoft's package manager for Windows. It is the part of the system a person actually types. Everything else — the catalog of applications, the review process behind it, and the servers that hold it — sits on the other side of the command.

The client arrives on the machine inside App Installer, a system component that Windows keeps updated on its own. Nothing has to be downloaded first on a supported version of Windows, and the command works from Command Prompt, PowerShell, or Windows Terminal alike.

Microsoft writes the product name as WinGet, with a capital G, in its documentation and release notes. The command typed at a prompt is always lowercase, because that is the name of the executable. Both spellings refer to the same tool, and older Microsoft material used the lowercase form throughout.

Typing winget on its own prints the list of available commands, and adding --help to any of them explains that command in more detail. Two options are worth knowing early. winget --version reports which build is installed, and winget --info prints the same version alongside license links and any policies an administrator has applied.

The command is unavailable until someone has signed in to the machine at least once, because Windows registers it in the background after first sign-in. On older installations it occasionally fails to appear on the search path, which produces a "not recognized" error even though the tool is present.

Installer behavior changes depending on how the prompt was opened. From an ordinary prompt, any package that needs elevation triggers a Windows consent dialog, and declining it stops the installation. From a prompt already running as administrator, no dialog appears at all, so an installer does whatever it likes without a further question. That convenience is worth using carefully, and only for software from a publisher you trust.

The command line is not the only door. The Microsoft.WinGet.Client module on the PowerShell Gallery exposes the same operations as PowerShell commands, so a script can search, install, and update packages without shelling out to the executable. A COM programming interface lets other applications drive the client directly, and Windows Package Manager also ships a server that exposes package operations to AI agent tools.

• Windows Package Manager
• PowerShell
• Windows Terminal
• Package manager