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Chocolatey

Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows, developed by Chocolatey Software. It's tied for #26 among the most-used developer tools, reported in roughly 11% of developer surveys. It installs and updates desktop software from the command line, filling a gap Windows historically lacked compared to Homebrew on macOS or APT on Linux — letting developers script machine setup instead of clicking through installer wizards one at a time.

Quick facts
Type: Windows package manager
Made by: Chocolatey Software
License: Free / open-source core, paid Chocolatey for Business tiers
Platforms/Hosting: Windows only
Primary use case: Installing, updating, and scripting desktop software installs on Windows

Jump to: Example Getting started Best for

Example

Chocolatey installs and updates software with simple one-line commands run from an elevated PowerShell or Command Prompt window.

# install an application
choco install googlechrome

# install multiple packages at once
choco install git vscode nodejs -y

# upgrade everything installed via Chocolatey
choco upgrade all -y

Getting started

Chocolatey installs itself via a single PowerShell command run as Administrator.

# install Chocolatey (run in an elevated PowerShell)
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = 3072
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Best for: Windows developers and IT teams who want to script and reproduce machine setup (installing dev tools, browsers, and utilities) instead of manually downloading and clicking through installers on every new machine.