Retrieve the list of applications installed on your computer

It may happen, especially when you want to change your computer or even simply before reformatting your current machine, that you need to list all the software (and games) installed on your PC.

The most obvious, but also the most tedious, solution is to go to "Programs and Features" via the Control Panel and list all the installed software... but of course, I have a more efficient solution to offer you. This solution will allow you to generate a text file with all your installed software.

This solution works for Windows 7, 8, 10 and even Windows 11… and maybe even on older versions of Windows. For my part, I made this tutorial on Windows 10. So here is how to see the list of applications installed on a PC!

Here are the steps to follow to generate and retrieve the list of applications installed on your computer:

1. To start, open command prompt by going to the Windows search bar at the bottom left of the screen and typing "cmd". You can also do the same search from the start menu also at the bottom left of your screen.

2. Right-click on “Command Prompt” and choose the “Run as administrator” option in order to have all the necessary rights for the following operations.
3. A console will then open
4. Type, without the quotes, “ WMIC » and press Enter
5. A new line will appear on the console with the following message: " wmic:root\cli>« 
6. Then enter the following string: /output:C:\MyApplications.txt product get name,version (I will explain later the few elements that can be modified) and press Enter

7. Wait a few moments until the line “ wmic:root\cli> » reappears
8. A text file named MyApplications.txt will then be created at the root of your C:/ drive. This file will contain the list of applications installed on your computer (and detected by Windows) as well as their version number.

And there you have it… and you didn’t even need to install any software.

Regarding the options of this function:

• You can change the address where the file will be generated (here C: by default)
• You can change the file name (here MyApplications.txt)
• Finally, you can choose whether or not to put the mention "version" which adds the version number of the software... if you delete the ",version" there will only be the name of the program

In short, here is another small Windows feature that is quite simple to use (even if it requires using somewhat barbaric tools for beginners like the command prompt) and which can be very practical in certain situations.

By the way, in the same genre, I explained to you how to obtain or print the list of files present in a folder !

So, as usual, don't hesitate to spread the good word around you by sharing this article on social networks!