winget-tui

New design and visual research by @niels9001.

A terminal user interface for Windows Package Manager (winget). Search, install, uninstall, and upgrade Windows packages without leaving your terminal.

Features

• Search & Discover — Find packages across all winget sources
• Installed Packages — View everything installed on your system
• Upgrade Management — See updates at a glance and batch-upgrade multiple packages
• Pin Awareness — Pin or unpin installed packages and filter pinned items without leaving the TUI
• Source Filtering — Filter by source (winget, msstore, or all)
• Real-Time Local Filter — Narrow Installed and Upgrades lists instantly with / or s
• Sortable Columns — Sort by Name, ID, or Version (ascending or descending) with S
• Version-Specific Install — Install a specific version with I
• CSV Export — Save the current visible package list to a CSV file with e
• Package Details — View publisher, description, license, homepage, and release notes
• Graceful Local Package Info — Non-winget installs still show a useful explanation when rich manifest metadata is unavailable
• Scrollable Details Pane — Read long descriptions without losing your place in the package list
• Configurable Themes and Startup Defaults — Select an accessible color preset and default view in config.toml
• Keyboard-Driven — Vim-style navigation, no mouse needed
• Non-Blocking — Install/uninstall/upgrade run in the background
• Single Binary — No runtime dependencies beyond winget itself

Prerequisites

• Windows 10/11
• winget 1.4+ installed
• A terminal with Unicode support (Windows Terminal recommended)

Installation

Install with Winget

winget-tui has been submitted to the Windows Package Manager community repository as Hanselman.WingetTUI. Once the submission is merged, install it with:

winget install Hanselman.WingetTUI

Download a release (recommended)

You do not need Rust to install or run winget-tui.

1. Download the latest Windows binary from the Releases page:
   • winget-tui-x64.exe for most Windows PCs
   • winget-tui-arm64.exe for Windows on ARM
2. Put the .exe somewhere convenient, such as C:\Tools\winget-tui\.
3. Run it from Windows Terminal:

.\winget-tui-x64.exe

Optionally rename the file to winget-tui.exe and add its folder to your PATH so you can run winget-tui from any terminal.

Run from source for development

Building from source is only needed if you want to develop or test changes locally. It requires:

• The Rust toolchain (cargo, rustc)
• Visual Studio Build Tools with the C++ workload (link.exe) and a Windows SDK (msvcrt.lib)

If cargo is not already available, install Rust first:

winget install --id Rustlang.Rustup -e

If cargo run fails with linker 'link.exe' not found or cannot open file 'msvcrt.lib', install the C++ build tools:

winget install --id Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools -e

In the Visual Studio Build Tools installer, select Desktop development with C++ and make sure a Windows 10/11 SDK is selected in the optional components. Close and reopen your terminal, then run the app from the repo:

git clone https://github.com/shanselman/winget-tui.git
cd winget-tui
cargo run

For an optimized local build:

cargo build --release
.\target\release\winget-tui.exe

The binary will be at target\release\winget-tui.exe.

Usage

winget-tui

Keybindings

Mouse Support

• Click on tabs to switch views (Search / Installed / Upgrades)
• Click on the search bar to start typing a search
• Click on a package row to select it and load details
• Scroll wheel over the package list to navigate up/down
• Scroll wheel over the detail pane to scroll long package details
• Right-click a package to select and load its details
• Click & drag the scrollbar to scrub through the list

Views

• Installed (default) — Lists all packages installed on your system
• Search — Search the winget repository for new packages
• Upgrades — Shows packages with available updates

Configuration

You can customize the startup view, source filter, sort order, and pinned-package filter with an optional config file:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\winget-tui\config.toml
• Dev/non-Windows fallback: $HOME/.config/winget-tui/config.toml

Example:

default_view = "upgrades"          # installed | search | upgrades
default_source = "winget"          # all | winget | msstore
default_sort = "name"              # name | name_desc | id | id_desc | version | version_desc | none
default_pin_filter = "hide_pinned" # all | pinned | hide_pinned
theme = "retro"                    # original | retro | nord | terminal

The terminal theme inherits the terminal profile's foreground and background colors, preserving transparency, custom color schemes, and system contrast settings. system is accepted as an alias.

Architecture

winget-tui
├── src/
│   ├── main.rs          # Entry point, terminal setup/teardown
│   ├── app.rs           # App state, message passing, async coordination
│   ├── backend.rs       # WingetBackend trait (abstraction layer)
│   ├── cli_backend.rs   # CLI implementation (shells out to winget.exe)
│   ├── config.rs        # Config file parsing and startup defaults
│   ├── handler.rs       # Keyboard and mouse input handling
│   ├── models.rs        # Data types (Package, Source, Operation, etc.)
│   ├── theme.rs         # Semantic theme colors and shared styles
│   └── ui.rs            # Ratatui rendering (all UI components)
└── Cargo.toml

The backend is behind a trait (WingetBackend) to allow future implementations (e.g., COM API for better performance).

License

Licensed under the MIT License. Third-party dependencies and assets remain subject to their respective licenses.