Client Verbosity Settings

[denelon]

Relevant area(s)

• WinGet CLI

Description of the new feature / enhancement

This is about controlling how much output WinGet itself prints to the console — not the output produced by an installer that WinGet invokes, and not the diagnostic log files.

Today WinGet prints a fixed amount of progress and status to the console. Users should be able to choose a verbosity level for WinGet's own console output, for example:

• silent / quiet — minimal or no console output (useful for scripting and clean CI logs)
• default — today's behavior
• verbose — additional detail about what WinGet is doing

Accessibility is a specific motivator: animated progress bars and spinners don't work well with screen readers, so a quieter/plain output mode improves the experience for those users.

Proposed technical implementation details

• A setting and/or CLI argument to select WinGet's console output verbosity (e.g. quiet / default / verbose).
• Keep these axes distinct so this issue stays focused:
  • This issue: the amount of WinGet's own console output.
  • Installer output is separate — WinGet doesn't control what an installer writes.
  • Diagnostic log level and progress / no-progress control are tracked in Allow controlling log level and output type using CLI arguments and environment variables #4508.
  • Output format (JSON / structured) is tracked in JSON Formatted Output Support #184.
• Include a mode that emits screen-reader-friendly output (no reliance on ANSI progress animations); relates to the existing --disable-interactivity argument and the progressBar setting.

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Updated with GitHub Copilot.

[josephsl]

Hi,

Regarding screen readers and progress bars: if we're talking about progress messages when an app is being downloaded/installed/updated/uninstalled, providing a textual output would work, something to the effect of:

winget install notepad++

Downloading 10%
Downloading 20%
...
Downloading 100%
Installing 0%
...
Installing 100%

For a practical example as to how screen readers can react to console output changes, take a look at how Git command-line for Windows does it when fetching commits while Narrator or NVDA is running.

Thanks.

[vedantmgoyal9]

Demitrius Nelon (@denelon) I guess this is completed. https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/blob/master/schemas/JSON/settings/settings.schema.0.2.json#L34

[Trenly]

Demitrius Nelon (@denelon) I guess this is completed. master/schemas/JSON/settings/settings.schema.0.2.json#L34

I disagree. This is about verbosity during the install process, not post-install looking at a log.