How to Create a List of Your Installed Programs on Windows

Having a list of what programs had installed in your machine, or the machine you manage, is useful if you are planning to install the same programs on your new machine. This list of programs may come into handy, and it provides you an easy way to eliminate those programs that no longer needed.

List All Programs Installed on Windows

The following command will list all the applications/programs that installed on your machine.

Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | Format-Table -AutoSize

Filter the List

You can use the where clause to filter the result. The following example shows filter the list of applications that the display name has the word “Microsoft” on it.

Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | where {$_.DisplayName -Like "Microsoft*"} | Format-Table -AutoSize

Export the List

You will probably want to export that to a file though, which is also easy enough. You can just send the output using the > symbol and adding the path to a new text file that you want to create. For example:

Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | Format-Table -AutoSize > C:\temp\InstalledPrograms-PS.txt

You could replace C:\temp\InstalledPrograms-PS.txt with the path and name you want to use for your file. I hope you find this method handy.