My WPF application needs to list the localized names of all Metro/WinRT applications installed for the user. I created a repo to store a working sample for the code presented: https://github.com/luisrigoni/metro-apps-list
1) Using PackageManager.FindPackagesForUser() method
var userSecurityId = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().User.Value;
var packages = packageManager.FindPackagesForUser(userSecurityId);
foreach (var package in packages)
Debug.WriteLine(package.Id.Name);
}
// output:
// Microsoft.BingFinance
// Microsoft.BingMaps
// Microsoft.BingSports
// Microsoft.BingTravel
// Microsoft.BingWeather
// Microsoft.Bing
// Microsoft.Camera
// microsoft.microsoftskydrive
// microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps
// microsoft.windowsphotos
// Microsoft.XboxLIVEGames
// Microsoft.ZuneMusic
// Microsoft.ZuneVideo
These outputs don't seems too friendly to show to the user...
2) Reading the AppxManifest.xml of each of these apps
var userSecurityId = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().User.Value;
var packages = packageManager.FindPackagesForUser(userSecurityId);
foreach (var package in packages)
{
var dir = package.InstalledLocation.Path;
var file = Path.Combine(dir, "AppxManifest.xml");
var obj = SerializationExtensions.DeSerializeObject<Package>(file);
if (obj.Applications != null)
{
foreach (var application in obj.Applications)
{
Debug.WriteLine(application.VisualElements.DisplayName);
}
}
}
// output:
// ms-resource:AppTitle
// ms-resource:AppDisplayName
// ms-resource:BingSports
// ms-resource:AppTitle
// ms-resource:AppTitle
// ms-resource:app_name
// ms-resource:manifestDisplayName
// ms-resource:ShortProductName
// ms-resource:mailAppTitle
// ms-resource:chatAppTitle
// ms-resource:///resources/residTitle
// ms-resource:///strings/peopleAppName
// ms-resource:///photo/residAppName
// ms-resource:34150
// ms-resource:33273
// ms-resource:33270
Definitely not friendly...
Update 1) Increasing above item (2) with SHLoadIndirectString funcion (hint by Erik F)
[DllImport("shlwapi.dll", BestFitMapping = false, CharSet = CharSet.Unicode, ExactSpelling = true, SetLastError = false, ThrowOnUnmappableChar = true)]
private static extern int SHLoadIndirectString(string pszSource, StringBuilder pszOutBuf, int cchOutBuf, IntPtr ppvReserved);
static internal string ExtractStringFromPRIFile(string pathToPRI, string resourceKey)
{
string sWin8ManifestString = string.Format("@{{{0}? {1}}}", pathToPRI, resourceKey);
var outBuff = new StringBuilder(1024);
int result = SHLoadIndirectString(sWin8ManifestString, outBuff, outBuff.Capacity, IntPtr.Zero);
return outBuff.ToString();
}
[...]
foreach (var application in obj.Applications)
{
Uri uri = new Uri(application.VisualElements.DisplayName);
var resourceKey = string.Format("ms-resource://{0}/resources/{1}", package.Id.Name, uri.Segments.Last());
Debug.WriteLine(ExtractStringFromPRIFile("<path/to/pri>", resourceKey));
}
[...]
// output:
// Finance
// Maps
// Sports
// Travel
// Weather
// Bing
// Camera
// SkyDrive
// Mail
// Messaging
// Calendar
// People
// Photos
// Games
// Music
// Video
Much, much better. We already have english labels. But how to extract other language resources?
I'm expecting retrieve the same label that is shown on Start Screen for each app, something like "Finanças", "Esportes", "Clima" if my language is pt-BR; "Finances", "Sports", "Weather" if my language is en-US.
[Q] Is there another way to get the application names? Maybe native/Win32 (DISM API/...)? Is possible to load the .pri file of each app to get the localized name?
As said, an updated working sample is here: https://github.com/luisrigoni/metro-apps-list