Without going through Windows Registry, is there a quicker way to detect programmatically whether a specific Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app is installed on a system? App will be installed through Windows Apps Store and its installation need to be verified from a Winform program written in C#. But the language doesn't matter.
You should be able to use PackageManager.FindPackage or PackageManager.FindPackageForUser to see if the target package is available universally or for the specific or current user.
See Calling Windows 10 APIs From a Desktop Application for info on how to call this from your WinForms app.
Also check out the Enumerate app packages by user SID sample which demonstrates enumerating app packages from a C# console app. The project used is out of date (it's for VS2013), but the overall code flow should still work.
Depending on your specific scenario (why do you need to know this and what will you do with that information?) there may be better ways for your specific use case. For example: you asked elsewhere about launching a UWP app. If you define and launch a protocol for the app you don't need to check if it's already there first as the protocol launch will offer to look for the app in the store if it's not installed.
Related
So for our project, we have this app that's in the Windows Store. It is a Unity UWP app. At some point, we want to check if program X is installed on the user's machine. If yes, we want to launch it, if no we want to provide the user with a download link (or whatever.)
The app we want to launch, however, is a Unity standalone app. The user can download it from our website.
I tried multiple things. PlayerPrefs, Register checking etc. None of these really work. Register checking turned out to work decently well, but that only works between standalone apps. UWP apps seem to have no access to the Register.
Which left me thinking about URIs etc. But, I'm a complete noob regarding all of this and I have no clue how or where to start. Any help or direction is highly appreciated.
Ideal scenario:
User downloads our app from the Windows Store
Users click a button within our app
Our app checks the user's system for App X
If App X is installed, we launch it, if not we do something else
App X opens.
The UWP app cannot interact with the standalone Unity app directly.
You can write another standalone desktop “helper” app that does the actual work of checking the registry and launching the Unity app, and then make this “helper” app part of the UWP package and resubmit the package to the Windows Store.
Keep the “helper” app as simple as possible so it doesn’t have other dependencies.
Use FullTrustProcessLauncher to launch the helper app when the user clicks the button.
And the UWP app needs to have runFullTrust capability in order to use FullTrustProcessLauncher.
runFullTrust is a restricted capacity and when you submit the app to the Windows Store it is required for you to specify the reason why the capacity is necessary for your app. See this answer for more details.
I'm actually creating an UWP 8.1 app for one of my client.And I've got some little issue with it.At some point of my app I've to get all the names of installed app in the device and view it as a list.When the user will click on any of them, I've to launch that certain app.
I've already tried to add restricted capabilities in the app manifest but it shows a blue line when I add,
Morever I can get access to the AppData/Packages by using folderpicker somehow but don't know what to do.
The app is for WinRT surface 3 and it isn't going to store or anything it has only one user. So if anyone know any sort of solution please let me know.
The PackageManager class has the methods to enumerate all installed apps.
However, in 8.1 the PackageManager can only be used in desktop apps (e.g. WPF, Winforms, Win32). It cannot be used from a Store app on that version of the operating system.
On Windows 10 you can use the class from both Store/UWP apps as well as classic desktop apps.
I'm working on creating custom Cortana commands. The commands are registered and executed using a Universal Windows Platform Application. (GitHub)
For instance, I've registered the following command
<Command Name="ShutDown">
<ListenFor>Shut down</ListenFor>
<Navigate/>
</Command>
To run this function in a UWP application
static async void ShutDown()
{
var dialog = new MessageDialog("This is where I would shut the computer down.");
await dialog.ShowAsync();
//System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("Shutdown", "-s -t 10");
}
But after setting this up I learned System.Diagnostics.Process isn't supported in UWP.
The custom commands I want to run involve some sort of execution such as launching external programs, running other scripts, or opening websites.
It makes sense that UWP doesn't support them given that it's universal and an XBox or a phone might not be able to do these, but I was hoping there was some alternative or hacky way to accomplish this on a Windows 10 PC.
Is there a way for me to execute Process commands or something else with similar functionality in a UWP application? It seems like even though I can get Cortana to execute my C# code, UWP doesn't support much that would be useful in this situation.
Thanks in advance.
There are - limited - ways to achieve similar behavior.
You could use LaunchUri to trigger other apps which registered for a certain URI-Scheme. This should work for your webbrowser scenario. More details here:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.system.launcher.launchuriasync.aspx
You could trigger another app and get results back from it using LaunchForResults. The called app has to support this. More details here:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/mt269386.aspx
You could trigger App Services provided by another app. The called app has to support this. The app service will be executed in background. ( I think this is pretty cool.) More details here:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2015/06/11/writing-windows-10-app-services-in-javascript.aspx
This is a little hacky: I'm not sure if this still works but it did work for Windows 8.1: You could create a so called "Brokered Component". This allows you to trigger everything from you app on you machine, but you won't be able to publish a brokered component into the store. This also allowed Process.Start() on Windows 8.1. It only worked for sideloaded apps. I'm not sure if it still works on Windows 10.
More info here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/dn630195.aspx
Summary:
Starting another app is pretty easy as long as the target app registered as app service or registered a protocol handler (Uri scheme).
Starting scripts or other *.exe is impossible if option 4 doesn't work any longer.
With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (1607) there is an option to enable this scenario on PC. With this API in the Desktop Extension SDK you can launch a fulltrust process that runs at the full user privileges:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/Windows.ApplicationModel.FullTrustProcessLauncher
This way you can light it up on the platforms where it is supported, i.e. PCs running 1607 or above. And your app will still be universal:
if (ApiInformation.IsApiContractPresent("Windows.ApplicationModel.FullTrustAppContract", 1, 0))
{
await FullTrustProcessLauncher.LaunchFullTrustProcessForCurrentAppAsync();
}
I have an existing App in Windows store(Metro Style)[XAML,C#]. I would like to convert this to Desktop(Ultra-book enabled ) and upload in to the Intel AppUp Store.
The application uses GPS and call several web API for certain features.
I there any tool to covert? or how could i port this app to Ultra-book enabled desktop app.?
Please provide step by step help or link..
I would check with Intel what APIs they provide for AppUp. I am almost sure though that there are no tools for this and you just need to solve it on a case by case basis.
I don't think there is any tool to convert it for you. Based on my experience with Intel AppUp, if you can extract your metro app functionality and create a normal desktop application for it, you should be able to submit the app in the AppUp store.
You will have to create a msi package for your desktop app and the msi should create a desktop shortcut which can launch your app. The appUp guys somehow figure out the shortcut target and can launch the app from the AppUp client itself. You will also have to take care of uninstallation from the appup interface.
I need to launch a couple of commands from my WinRT application, like if it were a Command Console, in order to do this, on not WinRT apps the class to be used is System.Diagnostic.Process but on Win RT his class is not available, is there any equivalent class or method that i could use?
Thanks in advance :)
Windows Store Apps cannot launch other processes directly, as Marylin already said. You can only use Launcher.LaunchFileAsync to launch the default application for the file type (file ending) the passed file has. Using this you could define a self-defined file type like .process in Windows and set its handler application to a windowless desktop application you write. The desktop application reads the process file which has the path to the application stored that is to start and launches it using Process.
This trick would certainly fail the certification but may be useful in apps you deploy to businesses skipping the Store.
A problem would be that the Windows Store App is set to the background if a Desktop application is launched. I think this is one reason that Microsoft does not allow it for certified apps.
You cannot do that from a Windows Store application - those are sandboxed and do not have access to other processes. More details here.