In several previous articles, we emphasized the importance of updating the programs you use to protect your device, as most current hacking operations occur due to vulnerabilities in your programs, especially older versions. This is in addition to the fact that updates often allow you to experience new features or solve annoying problems that you may face.
In this context, we have presented more than one way to identify the programs that need updating on your device, and because going through each program individually and updating it is tiring and difficult, we also discussed tools for automatically updating programs. But did you know that Windows already has a built-in tool to update all installed programs automatically? Let us introduce you to it and how to use it from the command prompt or CMD.
If you are using a recent version of Windows 10 or already installed Windows 11 on your device, there is a new feature added to the system called “Windows Package Manager” that allows you to manage all software-related aspects through the command prompt, whether CMD or PowerShell, so you can use the [winget] command to install programs on the computer as we explained in detail in a previous article, in addition to the ability to uninstall and update programs. All you have to do is execute a simple command and Windows will take care of checking for installed programs that need updating and will install any new versions easily. Here are the steps to follow.
First, open the Command Prompt on Windows through any of the methods we previously reviewed, but the easiest way is to press the Win + S keys together on the keyboard to open the search bar, then type “CMD” or “Windows Terminal” if you are using Windows 11, then from the search results click on the “Open” or “Run as administrator” option to install updates without requesting permission from you first.
Once the CMD window appears, type the command [winget upgrade] and then press Enter. If this is the first time you use the Windows Package Manager function, you will be asked to agree to the license agreement first by typing the letter “y” to agree and then pressing Enter. Once you do that, a list of all old programs on your device will be listed, including the names of the programs and the currently installed version numbers alongside the latest available version and the program’s ID.
It is important to note here that the Windows Package Manager allows you to install or update only supported programs, not all programs designed for Windows. This does not mean that it is a useless function at all, as you can write the command [winget install] and a list of supported programs will appear, including over 3700 different programs, and the number continues to increase almost every day.
So, you will surely find most of the programs you use, including browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, communication programs like Zoom, Whatsapp, and Skype, media players like VLC and Spotify, game libraries like Steam and Epic Games, and even developer programs like Visual Studio Code and Notepad++, among many others.
Now, to update the old programs that appeared in the list after typing the above-mentioned command, you can simply type the command [winget upgrade –all] and after pressing Enter, Windows will start downloading the latest versions of all programs and silently installing them, so all you have to do is wait until the “Successfully installed” message appears, and thus all the programs you use on your device have been updated.
But if you want to update a specific program instead of all programs, you can do so by typing [winget upgrade softwareID] replacing “softwareID” with the program’s specific id, and after pressing Enter, the new version will be downloaded and installed without your intervention.
With a simple step, you can keep using the latest versions of your programs without resorting to external tools to perform the same task. As is clear from the above example, we were able to update the VLC media player using CMD even though the program itself has a tool to check for the availability of a new update, like most other programs, but of course, updating each program individually takes a lot of time.
