Get installed applications in a system.

Question

How to get the applications installed in the system using c# code?

Answer 1

Your best bet is to use WMI. Specifically the Win32_Product class.

Answer 2

Iterate through "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" keys and check their "DisplayName" values.

Answer 3

You can take a look at this article. It makes use of registry to read the list of installed applications.

public void GetInstalledApps()
{
    string uninstallKey = @"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall";
    using (RegistryKey rk = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(uninstallKey))
    {
        foreach (string skName in rk.GetSubKeyNames())
        {
            using (RegistryKey sk = rk.OpenSubKey(skName))
            {
                try
                {
                    lstInstalled.Items.Add(sk.GetValue("DisplayName"));
                }
                catch (Exception ex)
                { }
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 4

Might I suggest you take a look at WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation). If you add the System.Management reference to your C# project, you'll gain access to the class `ManagementObjectSearcher', which you will probably find useful.

There are various WMI Classes for Installed Applications, but if it was installed with Windows Installer, then the Win32_Product class is probably best suited to you.

ManagementObjectSearcher s = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_Product");

Answer 5

Iterating through the registry key "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" seems to give a comprehensive list of installed applications.

Aside from the example below, you can find a version using Linq here and a similar version to what I've done here.

This is a rough example, you'll probaby want to do something to strip out blank rows like in the 2nd link provided.

string registry_key = @"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall";
using(Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey key = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(registry_key))
{
    foreach(string subkey_name in key.GetSubKeyNames())
    {
     using(RegistryKey subkey = key.OpenSubKey(subkey_name))
     {
      Console.WriteLine(subkey.GetValue("DisplayName"));
     }
    }
}

Alternatively, you can use WMI as has been mentioned:

ManagementObjectSearcher mos = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_Product");
foreach(ManagementObject mo in mos.Get())
{
    Console.WriteLine(mo["Name"]);
}

But this is rather slower to execute, and I've heard it may only list programs installed under "ALLUSERS", though that may be incorrect. It also ignores the Windows components & updates, which may be handy for you.

Answer 6

Here is a complete code for searching for Installed application or a program. 100% work on 32 and 64 bit os!!!

http://cf-sami.blogspot.com/2010/09/c-check-if-programapplication-is.html