Windows Package Manager

The Windows Package Manager is a package management system designed to help you automate the installation, upgrading, configuring, and uninstalling of software applications in Windows 11. The trick is that it's a command-line utility. But don't let that bother you: it's easy to learn and use, and there are third-party graphical front-ends if you get stuck.
Get to know the Windows Package Manager
The Windows Package Manager is accessed using Windows PowerShell or the Command Prompt, typically via the Terminal application. Because it's a command line application, having to type and retype Windows Package Manager would quickly get tedious, and so Microsoft has named this command using the much shorter moniker winget.

To get started, open Terminal and type the following command (followed by pressing ENTER):
>winget

The output describes the app, explains which command line arguments---separated into groups of commands and options---that winget accepts, and provides a link where you can learn more.

Learn more about app sources
Like other package managers, winget can be used to find apps and install them on your PC. Those apps are listed in repositories, and there are two configured by default, both of which are maintained by Microsoft: the Windows Package Manager app repository (winget) and the Microsoft Store (msstore). To see this, use the following command line:
>winget source list

Winget lets you add additional repositories, and it's possible that your workplace or educational institution maintains such a thing. But most people are well-served by the default choices, which are trusted and secure.
List the apps installed on your PC
To display a list of every app installed on your PC, regardless of source, use the following command line:
>winget list

The issue, of course, is that this will be a long list, even if you've just installed Windows 11 for the first time. But you can pipe the output with the PowerShell more command to force the list to pause after displaying a page full of information. To move to each subsequent page of the list, tap the SPACE bar.
>winget list | more

As you may be able to tell, the list provided by winget is sorted by Id and not Name, so it may appear to be non-alphabetical. If this bothers you, the following command line, which pipes the list to the PowerShell sort-object command, will display the list alphabetically by name.
>winget list | sort-object | more

OK, let's move on to some key Windows Package Manager uses.
Find an app to install with the Windows Package Manager
Winget has a search command that you can use to find apps to install. For example, if you want to see which Adobe apps are available in the default repositories, you can use the following:
>winget search adobe

The results list includes apps that come from the Microsoft Store (msstore) and the Windows Package Manager (winget) repositories, and you can see the source for each item in ...