Registry AppPaths

🪀 A package for reading the AppPaths registry key on Windows. Useful for retrieving applications that can be launched from the command prompt. 🗃

🛑 CAUTION

WINDOWS ONLY

This package uses reg.exe under the hood, thus, only works on Windows OS.

📃 Table of Contents

• Features
• Usage
• API
• Changelog
• Support
• License
• Related
• Author

🤖 Features

• ⚡ Instant results - reads Windows App Paths registry keys synchronously
• 🗂 Full list retrieval - grab all registered app paths in one call
• 🧠 Smart caching - avoids repeated registry lookups for faster performance
• 🔄 Force refresh - bypass cache when you need the latest data
• 🔍 Key presence check - verify if specific apps are registered
• 🔠 Case sensitivity option - match keys exactly or loosely
• 🧹 Cache clear - reset stored results anytime
• 💻 Windows-only - throws error if run on non‑Windows systems

🕵🏼 Usage

Install it by executing any of the following, depending on your preferred package manager:

pnpm add @igorskyflyer/registry-apppaths

yarn add @igorskyflyer/registry-apppaths

npm i @igorskyflyer/registry-apppaths

🤹🏼 API

getAppPaths(): string[]

Returns an array of sub-keys located in the AppPaths key.

import { getAppPaths } from '@igorskyflyer/registry-apppaths'

const apps: string[] = getAppPaths()

console.log(apps) // ['chrome.exe', 'firefox.exe', 'opera.exe'...]

hasAppPaths(list: string[]): boolean[]

Returns an array of Booleans indicating whether the entries of the parameter list are installed on the system.

import { hasAppPaths } from '@igorskyflyer/registry-apppaths'

const has: boolean[] = hasAppPaths(['chrome.exe', 'winword.exe', 'mspaintTYPO.exe'])

console.log(has) // [true, true, false]

refreshAppPaths(): void

Force refresh the info from the registry, instead of retrieving the cached data.

import { getAppPaths, refreshAppPaths } from '@igorskyflyer/registry-apppaths'

let apps: string[] = getAppPaths()

console.log(apps) // ['chrome.exe', 'firefox.exe', 'opera.exe'...]

// application install...
// we installed Word for example

refreshAppPaths()

apps = getAppPaths()

console.log(apps) // ['chrome.exe', 'firefox.exe', 'opera.exe', 'winword.exe'...]

📝 Changelog

📑 The changelog is available here, CHANGELOG.md.

🪪 License

Licensed under the MIT license which is available here, MIT license.

💖 Support

I work hard for every project, including this one and your support means a lot to me!
Consider buying me a coffee. ☕



Thank you for supporting my efforts! 🙏😊

🧬 Related

@igorskyflyer/pathexists

🧲 Provides ways of properly checking if a path exists inside a given array of files/directories both on Windows and UNIX-like operating systems. 🗺

@igorskyflyer/valid-path

🧰 Provides ways of testing whether a given value can be a valid file/directory name. 🏜

@igorskyflyer/unc-path

🥽 Provides ways of parsing UNC paths and checking whether they are valid. 🎱

@igorskyflyer/extendable-string

🦀 ExtendableString allows you to create strings on steroids that have custom transformations applied to them, unlike common, plain strings. 🪀

@igorskyflyer/mp3size

🧮 Calculates an estimated file size of Mp3 files. 🎶

👨🏻‍💻 Author

Created by Igor Dimitrijević (@igorskyflyer).