I want a way to know all installed software in Windows using Java so I can run them from within a Java app

I'm developing an app that shows all installed software - including those from the Microsoft store, and surely any software the user installs from anywhere else - in Windows environment, and I want the user to be able to run them from the app directly. Is there anyway to achieve this using Java only ?

The data of the installed app I want : its name, its icon, and the path to the executable application so I can run it directly from the Java app.

• I know how to open an app using Java. That's not what I'm asking for.

• By "Java only" I mean without writing native code, but there is no problem to use a library that uses native code. Which I didn't find any

In theory, yes it is possible. You should be able to traverse the file system, examine each filename and match the names whose file suffix corresponds to one of the Windows executable file extensions.

In practice:

• It could take a long time to do that. Potentially many minutes, depending on how many files the user has on their machine. Even longer if they have remote file systems mounted.
• The list of matches is likely to be too long for a sensible pick list.
• There is no way of knowing what any particular application does, or how it should be invoked.

The above assumes that the Java app that does this is a regular app, not a webstart app or applet or something else that runs in a Java security sandbox. A security sandbox will forbid your code from accessing the file system.