microsoft / microsoft/winget-cli

Command to reset winget to vanilla state

Open
#4,220 1 comment 2 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Issue-Feature
Dominant language
C++
Stars
26.4k
Forks
1.8k
Avg merge
1d 11h
Merged PRs (30d)
15

Description

Description of the new feature / enhancement

It'd be great with a Winget command to reset all settings, preferences, pinning, everything to a vanilla state. It could help solve strange, hard to troubleshoot problems, like the one I faced in #4219 where I ended up manually deleting %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\pinning.db.

I'd be happy if I could just pass a command and start from scratch.

Edit: One way to do it currently:

Get-AppxPackage -Name 'Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller' | Reset-AppxPackage
Proposed technical implementation details
> winget reset

Are you sure? This will delete all your preferences, pinned apps etc. Y/N: Y

Winget was successfully reset to vanilla state.

>

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the winget CLI command handling and how preferences and pinned applications are stored, including the pinning.db location mentioned in the issue. Compare the proposed winget reset behavior with the current PowerShell Reset-AppxPackage workaround; done means defining and implementing a safe reset of the intended state with confirmation and success output.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
cli
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.