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Get A List Of Installed Applications Using LINQ And C#

August 29th, 2008 | 14 Comments | Posted in Programming

To get a list of installed applications we need to look into registry. Microsoft.Win32 namespace contains objects which can be used to work with Windows Registry. In this post I will show you some code where I use the power of LINQ to retrieve and display a list of all applications installed on a machine.

The basic idea is that we iterate through a collection of RegistryKey objects within LocalMachine\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall. We then open the sub keys and get the DisplayName.

Here is the code:

static void DisplayInstalledApplications()
{
  string registryKey = 
    @"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall";
 
  using (Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey key =
    Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(registryKey))
  {
    var query = from a in
              key.GetSubKeyNames()
              let r = key.OpenSubKey(a)
              select new
              {
                Application = r.GetValue("DisplayName")
              };
 
    foreach (var item in query)
    {
      if (item.Application != null)
        Console.WriteLine(item.Application);
    }
  }
}
 
I can also make this a bit more LINQed by removing the foreach loop. It just adds a bit more C# 3.0 flavour to the code and does the retrieval and writing to console in one line.
 
static void DisplayInstalledApplications2()
{
  string registryKey =
    @"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall";
 
  using (Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey key = 
    Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(registryKey))
  {
    (from a in key.GetSubKeyNames()
    let r = key.OpenSubKey(a)
    select new
    {
      Application = r.GetValue("DisplayName")
    }).ToList()
      .FindAll(c => c.Application != null)
      .ForEach(c => Console.WriteLine(c.Application));
  }
}
 
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14 Responses to “Get A List Of Installed Applications Using LINQ And C#”

  1. Rajesh Says:
     September 10th, 2008 at 9:27 pm

    This is exactly what I was looking for. And getting the list using LINQ makes it even better.

    Looks like you have just changed the look of your site. It looks more professional now.

  2. Deepak Says:
     September 11th, 2008 at 10:55 am

    Rajesh,

    I am glad that you found this post useful. Thank you for your comment on the new theme. I was looking for something which would allow me to give this site a portal-type look. Finally I found the right theme.

  3. Mr.Bhatt Says:
     November 3rd, 2008 at 8:35 pm

    thats a lot for this helpful code snippet… save so much of my time, since i am beginner to programming…

    thanks again Deepak,

    anil bhatt…

  4. Deepak Says:
     November 3rd, 2008 at 8:52 pm

    Anil,

    I am happy to know that this post helped you.

  5. Taka Says:
     March 2nd, 2009 at 9:03 pm

    Excellent snippet!

  6. Deepak Says:
     March 2nd, 2009 at 9:11 pm

    Thanks Taka.

  7. Art Says:
     April 5th, 2009 at 4:47 pm

    Such way you don’t get applications that are installed for the specific user. You need to look in one more place in the registry:
    HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-…-7206\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
    for every user that exists in the OS

  8. NT Says:
     June 4th, 2009 at 9:15 pm

    Or, much more compact:

    string registryKey = @”SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall”;

    RegistryKey key = LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(registryKey);
    foreach (String a in key.GetSubKeyNames()) {
    RegistryKey subkey = key.OpenSubKey(a);
    Console.WriteLine(subkey.GetValue(“DisplayName”));
    }

  9. Deepak Says:
     June 4th, 2009 at 10:13 pm

    nice one NT

  10. skroslak Says:
     October 12th, 2009 at 4:39 am

    for 64bit OS you also need to search this key:
    “SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall”

  11. skroslak Says:
     October 12th, 2009 at 4:53 am

    so the whole code that works for me is here (may be simplified, I don’t know):
    string registryKey = @”SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall”;
    RegistryKey key = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(registryKey);
    foreach (String a in key.GetSubKeyNames())
    {
    RegistryKey subkey = key.OpenSubKey(a);
    Console.WriteLine(subkey.GetValue(“DisplayName”));
    }
    registryKey = @”SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall”;
    key = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(registryKey);
    foreach (String a in key.GetSubKeyNames())
    {
    RegistryKey subkey = key.OpenSubKey(a);
    Console.WriteLine(subkey.GetValue(“DisplayName”));
    }

  12. Deepak Says:
     October 23rd, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    Thanks Skroslak.

  13. Igor Says:
     February 27th, 2010 at 1:39 am

    skroslak thank you for the 64 bit location!!

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