Choco a package manger for windows!!

What's choco:

Choco is shorthand for Chocolatey, if you use mac or linux you are familiar with package managers. Package managers are great because you able to install/uninstall/update from command line, install specific version if you are facing problem or you want to test something and the more important that you can update all software to get latest software features and security patches at once. choco is a free and opensource. let's take a brief look with most used commands.

Install choco:

Run PowerShell as system administrator any type this command

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Close and reopen PowerShell as administrator, you are ready to use choco!

Find packages:

you can find almost any software you could imagine and if you can't find the one that you need you can build a script then add it to the choco community packages.

Install

choco install <Package name>

Uninstall

choco uninstall <Package name>

Upgrade:

choco upgrade <Package name>

Flags:

Some of choco flags you will needed:

-y to confirm installation, -f to force installation if any failure happens

-y, --yes, --confirm
     Confirm all prompts

 -f, --force
     Force - force the behavior. Do not use force during normal operation

All list of commands and flags

Params:

You can find params in the package page, every package has a page with descriptions, parameters, versions if you need to customize it. params are different from package to onther.

choco install <Package name> --params "/NoDesktopShortcut"

Version History:

Install specific version if you need that, Let's take an example of install Firefox browser

choco install firefox --params "/NoDesktopShortcut" --version=98.0 -y

Script:

Install multiple packages with multiple params at the same time, for example we are going to install firefox, chrome, adobereader

choco install firefox --params "/NoDesktopIcon /NoTaskbarShortcut" googlechrome adobereader -params "/DesktopIcon /UpdateMode:4" -y

Search:

Search for any app without leave your terminal

choco search firefox

List:

View list of all your installed applications

choco list --localonly

Upgrades:

Upgrade all packages at once in one command line

choco upgrade all -y'

Vola!, all your apps updated at once without need to check every one in setting searching for update button

Bonus tip:

update all packages automatically every certain time for example every week, day or at startup this could happen in many ways Choco Upgrade All at Startup, Choco Upgrade All at, PowerShell script, Task Scheduler

Note:

This is a brief intro with most used commands to start using and enjoy choco, but choco is more than that it's a a software management solution have a tons of apps with tons of commands & options, it's free and open source. They also have a business plan but the free one are more than enough for regular user, so for sure you should take a look on documentation for more details or advanced use cases.