- What is Chocolatey?
- What can you do with it?
- Installing Chocolatey
- Installing Programs
- Uninstalling Programs
- Updating Single, Multiple or All Programs
- Chocolatey GUI
- Alternatives to Chocolatey
What is Chocolatey?
Chocolatey is a command-line-based package manager for Windows, built on the open-source NuGet platform. It allows you to download and install software from the internet with just a few simple commands in the Windows terminal.
What can you do with it?
Chocolatey simplifies your workflow. You no longer need to manually download and install the latest versions of software—Chocolatey handles that for you. It’s also great for keeping your installed programs up to date.
For example, I now use Chocolatey privately whenever I reinstall a computer for friends or family. I created a custom Windows script that includes all necessary applications for a fresh setup (browser, email client, video codecs, Notepad++, media player, etc.).
At work, I also use Chocolatey for software deployment. This ensures that all computers in a department (e.g. IT, office, design) have the same set of tools installed and are regularly updated.
Installing Chocolatey
You can install Chocolatey easily using CMD or Windows PowerShell. Simply run the following command as administrator.
After installation, close and reopen the terminal before using Chocolatey.
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))Installing Programs
To install programs with Chocolatey, open the terminal as administrator. You can install single or multiple packages like this:
choco install <package-name>
choco install <package-name1> <package-name2>
choco install firefox
choco install firefox vlcTo install without confirmation prompts, add the -y flag:
choco install -y firefox Uninstalling Programs
Uninstalling programs is just as easy as installing them:
choco uninstall -y <package-name>
choco uninstall -y <package-name1> <package-name2> Updating Single, Multiple or All Programs
You can use Chocolatey to easily update your software.
To automate this, you can create a batch script with choco upgrade all -y and run it manually, on startup, or via the Windows Task Scheduler.
choco upgrade -y <package-name>
choco upgrade -y <package-name1> <package-name2>
choco upgrade -y all Chocolatey GUI
If you don’t want to search for packages via the website all the time, there’s now an official Chocolatey GUI:
choco install -y chocolateygui
Alternatives to Chocolatey
There are a few alternatives to Chocolatey. The most notable one is Winget, Microsoft’s own package manager. You can browse available packages via Winstall.app. Winget is likely to gain more importance in the future.
Personally, I still prefer Chocolatey for now because it is more mature and currently offers a wider selection of packages.
