Candy Shop offers a simple user interface to upgrade any number of packages installed through either WinGet or Chocolatey. The upgrade process can be launched directly from the notification or for a selection of packages from the application window. The upgrades are performed in a visible terminal, allowing the user to inspect the package manager's output directly.

Visit the gallery.

• Upgrade outdated packages
• Notifies about outdated packages on system start, if desired.
• Pin or unpin packages
• Browse installed packages
• Automatically remove shortcuts from your desktop that are created during the Chocolatey upgrade process

• Windows 10, version 1809 or later
• .NET 8 runtime
• gsudo (optional)
• Chocolatey or WinGet

winget install Microsoft.DotNet.DesktopRuntime.8
winget install gerardog.gsudo

In WinGet mode, Candy Shop will attempt to validate the winget output with locale dependent strings. Currently, this is only supported for English and German. Learn more.

• Make sure the prerequisites are met
• Download and run the installer from the release page
• Read the settings section

If you're running WinGet and have not used the tool before, you may need to accept licensing agreements in an interactive console. To test for this, simply run winget list in the terminal and follow the instructions. If you see a list of your installed packages, you're good to go.

Candy Shop can be configured to start a gsudo cache session to prevent repeated UAC popups for upgrade installation in WinGet mode. The session will be started at the beginning of the upgrades and terminated once they are complete, and no changes are made to the gsudo configuration.

Note that this does not apply to Chocolatey upgrades, because (unlike WinGet) Chocolatey allows several upgrades to be started using a single command, thus eliminating the need for repeated popups.

No other batch operations are performed that require administrator privileges. Learn more about the security implications of the gsudo credentials cache.

On first launch, you will be prompted to choose your package manager and your preferred privileges for upgrading any packages. To make changes to your selections simply modify the configuration file or delete it entirely, resulting in the first launch popup being shown again. Most settings can also be changed in the UI.

By default, Candy Shop is configured to use choco and winget from PATH. It is recommended to set these explicitly in the configuration file.

Configuration and log files are placed in %localappdata%\CandyShop. The configuration file CandyShop.config contains the following properties with their respective defaults:

{
  "ChocolateyBinary": "choco",
  "ChocolateyLogs": "C:/ProgramData/chocolatey/logs",
  "WingetBinary": "winget",
  "AllowGsudoCache": false,
  "WingetMode": true,
  "CleanShortcuts": false,
  "ElevateOnDemand": true,
  "SupressAdminWarning": false,
  "SupressLocaleLogWarning": false,
  "CloseAfterUpgrade": false,
  "ValidExitCodes": [ 0, 1641, 3010, 350, 1604 ]
}

• WingetMode: If true, the selected package manager is WinGet, else it is Chocolatey.
• ChocolateyBinary, WingetBinary: Path to the respective binaries. These should be overwritten with explicit locations.
• ElevateOnDemand: When activated, gsudo is used to attempt to elevate the package manager process.
• AllowGsudoCache: Whether to start a gsudo cache session for batch operations that require elevated permissions. (This currently only applies to the WinGet upgrade process.)
• CloseAfterUpgrade: If this is true, Candy Shop will terminate after upgrading packages, as long as the operation was successful. Otherwise, the main window will be shown again.
• ValidExitCodes: Depending on the configuration of Chocolatey and the package in question, some non-zero exit codes when upgrading packages should be considered valid. This setting provides sensible defaults and allows further customization. (Chocolatey only.)
• CleanShortcuts: If this setting is enabled, Candy Shops watches the Desktop for new shortcuts, that are created during an active upgrade process, and attempts to delete them.
• SupressLocaleLogWarning: Suppresses warnings about unsupported locales in the log files. More about languages.

--silent, -s is used to launch silently and notify when outdated packages are available.

--debug is used to print debug level log messages to your log file.

• dotnet publish

• added full winget support
• added wizard for first start
• various UI improvements
• added upgrade all button notification

• various UI improvements
• added refresh functionality
• returning to the main window after the upgrade no longer shows outdated states

• Introduced property and UI element to customize shutdown behavior
• The application no longer terminates after failed upgrades and instead redirects to the main window.
• Fixed an error, where pinning was impossible because of missing admin privileges
• Fixed an error, where installed packages were not loaded if Candy Shop was launched in the background

• Replaced old notifications with modern, interactive notifications using Windows App SDK
• 'start with system' now uses a shortcut in the startup folder instead of Windows task scheduler
• The legacy task can be removed through the prompt at program launch

• Moved to latest .NET LTS release (.NET 8)
• This changes the requirements of the runtime version
• Windows 10 is now considered the latest supported version

• Candy Shop no longer requires admin privileges by default, instead it prompts for elevated rights using gsudo

• Chocolatey GUI
• WingetUI

• If credentials are cached using gsudo and the upgrade process takes longer than the allowed cache duration, no attempt is made to start another cached session, resulting in repeated UAC popups.

• Create CandyShop winget package

v1.0:

• For the first release, a settings page and a re-organization of the configuration file are the only things left.

Future versions

• Migrate to WinUI