Windows Package Manager 1.12 – What’s New and Why It Matters
If you’ve been using winget for a while, the latest pre‑release (v1.12.470) is worth a quick look. It adds real‑world fixes, introduces font handling, and gives the App Installer a WinUI 3 makeover that should finally stop those dreaded “missing runtime” pop‑ups on older Windows builds.
MCP Server – A One‑Click Helper
Running winget mcp now pulls up the new MCP server wizard. It walks you through adding or updating sources, setting policies, and tweaking authentication. If you’ve ever had to hand‑edit a winget.sources.json file just to get a custom feed working, this will save you a handful of hours.
winget mcp
The wizard’s sanity checks prevent the “source open failure” that used to bite people when they had more than one non‑explicit source. That bug was fixed in 1.12, so your config should stay intact even if you add or remove feeds later.
WinUI 3 App Installer – No More Runtime Roadblocks
The App Installer moved from WinUI 2 to WinUI 3 and now relies on the Windows App Runtime 1.8 instead of the old WinUI 2 package. The consequence? It no longer crashes on older builds that lack the runtime, and progress bars finally update correctly.
If you’ve run into a “App Installer won’t launch” error after an OS upgrade, install or update to this release and it should behave as expected:
winget upgrade Microsoft.AppInstaller
Manifest Schema 1.12 – Fonts and Nested Installers
The schema bump adds two new installer types: Font and NestedInstallerType. This means you can now package fonts directly with winget, or bundle a .zip of nested installers as part of an app.
Why it matters: I once upgraded a portable PDF reader that had a bundled font zip. With the old schema, the font disappeared from the registry when dev mode was off – the PATH entry got wiped. The new rules keep fonts registered and visible to all users.
winget install --id=Microsoft.FluentFonts -s winget-font
The winget-font source is still in beta and not accepting public submissions, but you can pull from it locally if you’ve built your own font packages.
Font Support – Install, Uninstall, Search
- Install a font: winget install Microsoft.FluentFonts -s winget-font
- Remove a font: winget uninstall Microsoft.FluentFonts -s winget-font
- Search the local font source: winget search font -s winget-font
The commands now respect user and machine scopes. If you’ve ever seen a font show up in “Control Panel → Fonts” but not actually render in an app, that’s usually because it was installed with the wrong scope – this release fixes that.
Bug Fixes That Actually Matter
| Issue | Fix |
|---|---|
| UTF‑8 BOM caused manifest validation to fail on the first line | Now accepted. |
| Portable package upgrade removed from PATH when dev mode disabled | No longer removes the entry. |
| Multiple sources with fewer than two non‑explicit ones caused open failure | Fixed. |
| App Installer progress bar never updated | Progress now shown correctly. |
| Elevation required packages would silently fail to launch | Now prompts for elevation properly. |
I’ve seen developers lose half a day debugging why a portable tool vanished from PATH after an upgrade—dev mode was off and the system wiped it out. This patch saves that headache.
Experimental Font Features – Try at Your Own Risk
You can enable experimental font support by adding this to your winget-settings.json:
{
"$schema": "https://aka.ms/winget-settings.schema.json",
"experimentalFeatures": {
"fonts": true
}
}
Once enabled, the new winget font list --details command shows a table of installed families and face counts. It’s useful for auditing what fonts you’ve actually pulled in via winget.
That’s all there is to it. Update now if you’re on Windows 10 build 1909 or newer and enjoy smoother installs, better error handling, and the ability to manage fonts with winget. Happy installing!
Release Windows Package Manager 1.12.470
This is a servicing release of Windows Package Manager v1.12. If you find any bugs or problems, please help us out by filing an issue.
Release Windows Package Manager 1.12.470 · microsoft/winget-cli
