9 April 2019

Chocolatey

Chocolatey is a windows package manager meaning software can be installed through shell commands. This enables software to be installed, upgraded and uninstalled via scripts.

I’ve started to try using Chocolatey across my different devices in an effort to keep them in sync with the different programs. Although the commands must be run on the individual devices, it’s very helpful to have a list of packages installed which I’m maintaining in this post (see below).

Next time I set up a machine I’ll just need to follow the below instructions and let Chocolatey do much of the heavy lifting.

Install

Open PowerShell in Admin mode

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Initial set up

Chocolatey asks for confirmation before any install, although sensible this can become tiresome. To avoid this you can set a -y flag on every choco install command or set the following global chocolatey flag to make life easier.

choco feature enable -n allowGlobalConfirmation

Basic Choco commands

Commands Reference

Search for packages

Chocolatey seems to have a lot of the programs you may wish to install but it’s not always obvious what the package name is. This is where the search command comes in.

choco search <package>

I’ve recently started to use the package search on the website instead as easier to find the relevant package. https://chocolatey.org/packages

Choco installs

Here is my list of packages that I usually install. I’ll be aiming to keep this list up to date so I’ve a reference of my installed packages as a gist.

      
        choco install 7zip
      
        choco install adobereader
      
        choco install angryip
      
        choco install anki
      
        choco install autohotkey
      
        choco install awscli
      
        choco install brave
      
        choco install choco-upgrade-all-at-startup
      
        choco install curl
      
        choco install dashlane
      
        choco install ditto
      
        choco install docker-desktop
      
        choco install dotnet4.6.2
      
        choco install dotnetcore-sdk
      
        choco install dotnetfx
      
        choco install drawio
      
        choco install dropbox
      
        choco install emeditor
      
        choco install epicgameslauncher
      
        choco install fiddler
      
        choco install figma
      
        choco install filezilla
      
        choco install firacode
      
        choco install firefox
      
        choco install git
      
        choco install git-fork
      
        choco install GoogleChrome
      
        choco install google-drive-file-stream
      
        choco install handle
      
        choco install httrack
      
        choco install hub
      
        choco install hwmonitor
      
        choco install imageresizerapp
      
        choco install javaruntime
      
        choco install lightshot
      
        choco install linqpad
      
        choco install logparser
      
        choco install microsoftazurestorageexplorer
      
        choco install microsoft-teams
      
        choco install microsoft-windows-terminal
      
        choco install nimbletext
      
        choco install nodejs
      
        choco install notepadplusplus
      
        choco install openssh --pre
      
        choco install openvpn
      
        choco install pandoc
      
        choco install papercut
      
        choco install pulumi
      
        choco install poshgit
      
        choco install postman
      
        choco install powershell-core
      
        choco install rescuetime
      
        choco install slack
      
        choco install soapui
      
        choco install sonos-controller
      
        choco install spotify
      
        choco install steam
      
        choco install tor-browser
      
        choco install sql-server-express
      
        choco install sql-server-management-studio
      
        choco install vscode
      
        choco install wget
      
        choco install whatsapp
      
        choco install yarn
      
        choco install zoom

view raw Chocolatey-install-list.ps hosted with ❤ by GitHub

You can also see what packages you have installed with

choco list --localonly

Upgrade installed package versions

To check which packages are outdated but not perform any updates, run the following.

choco outdated

To upgrade these outdated packages you can either upgrade a single package. NOTE: upgrade is the correct command here, update is being depreciated in version 1.0

choco upgrade <package>

or upgrade them all in a single command

choco upgrade all

Upgrade Chocolatey itself

Inevitably from time to time Chocolatey itself will need to be upgraded. The above commands will work but for reference, here is the command to only upgrade Chocolatey.

choco upgrade chocolatey

Uninstall packages

choco uninstall <package>