I recently wrote about the Windows Package Manager (winget) for the Windows 11 Field Guide, and I separately explained how you can use Winstall to create a script to more easily automate winget-based batch app installs. But command line tools aren’t for everybody. Fortunately, there is a third-party utility called WingetUI that puts a friendly face on this functionality and, better still, provides a key missing feature.

WingetUI is exactly what it sounds like: a graphical UI for winget. As such, it provides all of the key features in winget, including a way to find and install apps (packages) from trusted online repositories, a way to manage updates to the apps you’ve already installed, and a way to manage installed apps, including uninstalling them.

But WingetUI also goes beyond the capabilities provided by winget. It lets you optionally connect to other repositories, including Chocolatey and Scoop, in addition to Winget and the Microsoft Store. And it can run in the background and keep installed apps (packages) updated automatically.

That latter ability is a big deal (to me): with winget, you need to fire up a Terminal window from time to time, see which apps (packages) have updates, and then manually update each one. Or, you can run a fairly hard-to-remember command line to update them all at once.

WingetUI can automate this: in addition to having a Software Updates view that displays those apps (packages) that need updates, WingetUI will display a notification whenever there are updates. That notification lets you trigger the update(s). By default, WingetUI checks for updates every hour, but you can change that timing to your needs in its settings interface. Better still, you can check an option—“Update packages automatically”—that will keep everything up-to-date, all the time. It’s like the Microsoft Store, but for all apps.

WingetUI is so useful, I have a hard time believing that Microsoft won’t create something just like it soon. But in the meantime, it’s a friendlier front-end to winget and something you can use alongside my previous tip where you use Winstall to batch-install all the apps you need and then use WingetUI to keep them all up-to-date.

I’m experimenting with doing just that right now.

You can learn more about WingetUI on Marti Climent’s website, and at its Github repository. WingetUI is free.