One of the most attractive features of running a Linux system is the instant access to thousands of packages that are able to be installed from the Linux distro’s package manager.
The apt package manager does a lot more than just install packages. One example is using apt to search for packages to install. In this guide, we’ll see how to list installed packages with apt. This will only work in Linux distros that use the apt package manager, such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint just to name a few.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to list installed packages with apt package manager
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Any Linux distro with apt |
| Software | apt package manager |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
List installed packages with apt package manager
Use the following command examples to list installed packages with apt.
- List all installed packages by executing the following command. This will also show version numbers and architecture for each installed package, as well as what repositories they belong to.
$ apt list --installed
- Since each package consumes a line within the output, a massive amount of lines can be returned. You can make the output more manageable by piping to
lessormore.$ apt list --installed | less OR $ apt list --installed | more
- To look for a specific package, you can pipe to
grepand specify part of the package name that you’re checking for.$ apt list --installed | grep nginx
Closing Thoughts
In this guide, we saw how to list installed packages on Linux by using the apt package manager. This included a few different command line examples to help you quickly determine which packages are installed, including if you’re looking for a specific one.
