01: How to install WinGet on a server that you are using as a management station (unsupported)?

The Software Package Manager MMC snap-in requires that your management station has Winget installed locally. Winget APIs are initiated from the management station to search for software packages available in the Winget store.

Therefore, if your management station is Windows 10 or 11, Winget is built in and there’s nothing to do. Simply have the latest PolicyPak MMC snap-in and you’re ready to go. You can verify this by opening any command prompt and typing Winget.  If Winget returns with its help text, you’re ready to go.

However, Winget is not present on Windows Servers which you may be using as your Group Policy Object creation / management station. As such you might wish to install Winget on a server to then create PolicyPak Software Package Manager Winget policies.

Note that we are not encouraging this nor is it supported, but it should work.

This long (unsupported) procedure we found did install Winget on Server 2022: https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2021/11/install-winget-in-windows-server-2022-no-applicable-app-licenses-error/

There are also other Google-able techniques to get Winget working on servers.

However a faster (and equally unsupported) way to achieve the goal would be:

1. Install Chocolaty on your management station. The up to date instructions are always here: https://chocolatey.org/install The one-line powershell installs Chocolaty on your server.
2. Run the command  choco install winget-cli

Screenshots of this method are: