npm package discovery and stats viewer.

Discover Tips

  • General search

    [free text search, go nuts!]

  • Package details

    pkg:[package-name]

  • User packages

    @[username]

Sponsor

Optimize Toolset

I’ve always been into building performant and accessible sites, but lately I’ve been taking it extremely seriously. So much so that I’ve been building a tool to help me optimize and monitor the sites that I build to make sure that I’m making an attempt to offer the best experience to those who visit them. If you’re into performant, accessible and SEO friendly sites, you might like it too! You can check it out at Optimize Toolset.

About

Hi, 👋, I’m Ryan Hefner  and I built this site for me, and you! The goal of this site was to provide an easy way for me to check the stats on my npm packages, both for prioritizing issues and updates, and to give me a little kick in the pants to keep up on stuff.

As I was building it, I realized that I was actually using the tool to build the tool, and figured I might as well put this out there and hopefully others will find it to be a fast and useful way to search and browse npm packages as I have.

If you’re interested in other things I’m working on, follow me on Twitter or check out the open source projects I’ve been publishing on GitHub.

I am also working on a Twitter bot for this site to tweet the most popular, newest, random packages from npm. Please follow that account now and it will start sending out packages soon–ish.

Open Software & Tools

This site wouldn’t be possible without the immense generosity and tireless efforts from the people who make contributions to the world and share their work via open source initiatives. Thank you 🙏

© 2024 – Pkg Stats / Ryan Hefner

@josephuspaye/start-apps

v0.1.0

Published

Get a list of apps in the Start Menu, with details.

Downloads

1

Readme

start-apps

Get a list of apps in the Start Menu, with details. Supports classic (desktop) and store (UWP) apps. For store apps, the paths to their icons are included.

This project is part of #CreateWeekly, my attempt to create something new publicly every week in 2020.

Installation

npm install -g @josephuspaye/start-apps

Example

The following program gets all the apps in the Start Menu and dumps the list in JSON format:

import { getApps } from '@josephuspaye/start-apps';

async function main() {
  const apps = await getApps();
  console.log(JSON.stringify(apps, null, '  '));
}

main();
[
  {
    type: 'store',
    name: 'Mail',
    appUserModelId:
      'microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_8wekyb3d8bbwe!microsoft.windowslive.mail',
    packagePath:
      'C:\\Program Files\\WindowsApps\\microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_16005.13228.41011.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe',
    packageImages: {
      backgroundColor: '#0078D7',
      icon: {
        default:
          'C:\\Program Files\\WindowsApps\\microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_16005.13228.41011.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\\images\\HxMailAppList.scale-400.png',
      },
      tile: {
        default:
          'C:\\Program Files\\WindowsApps\\microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_16005.13228.41011.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\\images\\HxMailMediumTile.scale-400.png',
      },
    },
  },
  {
    type: 'classic',
    name: 'Zoom',
    appUserModelId: 'zoom.us.Zoom Video Meetings',
    targetPath: 'C:\\Users\\jpaye\\AppData\\Roaming\\Zoom\\bin\\Zoom.exe',
    targetArguments: '',
    startMenuLink:
      'C:\\Users\\jpaye\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Zoom\\Zoom.lnk',
  },
  // ...more apps...
];

API

interface ClassicApp {
  type: 'classic';
  name: string;
  appUserModelId: string;
  targetPath: string;
  targetArguments: string;
  startMenuLink?: string;
}

interface Image {
  default?: string;
  onBlack?: string;
  onWhite?: string;
}

interface Images {
  backgroundColor: string;
  icon: Image;
  tile: Image;
}

interface StoreApp {
  type: 'store';
  name: string;
  appUserModelId: string;
  packagePath: string;
  packageImages?: Images;
}

type App = ClassicApp | StoreApp;

/**
 * Get all apps in the Start Menu
 */
function getApps(): Promise<App[] | undefined>;

Building the StartApps binary from source

The Node.js library uses a binary built from a .NET Core project to list the apps and their details. The source of this project is at StartAppsProject. You can build the project to get a binary as follows:

  • Install Visual Studio Community (the project was created using the 2019 version)
  • Clone this repo and double-click the StartApps.csproj file in the project directory to open it in Visual Studio
  • In the Visual Studio application menu, click "Build" → "Publish StartApps"
  • Choose "For NPM - Win x64, Framework-dependant" in the dropdown menu on the publish page and click "Publish" to build the binary
  • Find the built binary in bin\Release\netcoreapp3.1\publish

Licence

MIT