Reinstall all your apps on a new PC with winget export / import — via Microsoft Learn

Commandlow riskWindows 11Windows 10

winget can write a list of the apps installed on your PC to a JSON file and reinstall them all on a fresh Windows with one command. It's a fast way to set up a new PC or a clean install.

Takes effect right away

The easy way

  1. Run the export on the old PC and copy apps.json to the new one (USB stick, network share and so on).
  2. Run the import on the new PC. --ignore-unavailable skips apps that aren't in any winget source, instead of stopping.
  3. Add --include-versions to the export if you need exactly the same versions. Otherwise the import installs the latest ones.

Command

Run in a normal PowerShell / Terminal window.

# On the old PC
winget export -o $HOME\Desktop\apps.json
# On the new PC
winget import -i $HOME\Desktop\apps.json --ignore-unavailable --accept-package-agreements --accept-source-agreements
Only apps that winget can find in a source (winget or msstore) are exported. Others are reported and left out. Read the license agreements you're accepting with the --accept flags. To undo, uninstall any apps you don't want.

Sources

Source reviewed
2026-11-02
Link checked
2026-11-02
Tested hands-on
Not by Oddbyte.Me

Oddbyte.Me hasn't tried this on every Windows build, so keep the undo handy.

wingetappsnew pcmigrationreinstallpackage manager

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