Getting list of programs installed from command line

This is extremely useful when you are swapping your machine or doing a clean install and you need a list of programs you have installed.

Windows comes with a tool called wmic.

Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC)

This is a command-line and scripting interface that simplifies the use of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and systems managed through WMI.

WMIC is based on aliases. Aliases make the primary data provided by WMI available without having to understand WMI-specific concepts. WMI data and many WMI features are also accessible through WMI without aliases.

For more information: WMIC documentation

The first thing we need to do is open a command Prompt.

  1. Click Start and type CMD in the search box.
  2. Click cmd.exe at the top of the search results.
  3. At the cmd prompt type wmic and hit enter.
  4. You will now see wmic:root\cli>
  5. Type product get name,version hit enter. wmic:root\cli>product get name,version

If you want to export the list to a text file wmic:root\cli>/output:c:\ProgramList.txt product get name,version

You may not get the list of all the applications here. Reason explained here