Leave driver updates to Windows, it's much safer. You're unlikely to see any major benefits (drivers rarely get significant security patches that Windows won't handle itself), and a failed or poorly chosen driver update can seriously mess up your PC. Software Updater can also scan for out-of-date drivers, but we wouldn't recommend that. Let me know if I missed anything important.Įdit: I almost forgot Windows Remix, which is basically Ninite but with a larger selection of software, but it is still in beta.Avira Software Updater is a simple patch manager which helps you spot the latest updates for more than 150 popular applications.Īvira doesn't provide a full list of its supported applications, unfortunately, but it seems to include Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, CCleaner and more. There are some other variants on Chocolatey, but most of them are pretty much the same, with maybe a few different packages. There are also more traditional package managers, the most popular being Chocolatey, but unless you've been using a package manager for everything you've installed, at least when I tried it, you need to reinstall everything through the package manager for it to register.

It does have a major downside in that silent installs can be a bit tricky, as you have to identify the type of installer to know which flag to use. Neither of these supported custom programs, so I kept looking and found Ketarin, which is a bit trickier to set up, but supports anything on FileHippo, and you can add just about any other program. I moved to PatchMyPc Updater, which has a much larger selection and automatically detects installed programs.

Ninite is the most popular 'package manager' for Windows, but I didn't like the limited selection.

Patchmypc alternative