{"id":335,"date":"2026-09-29T09:00:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T16:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/?p=335"},"modified":"2026-09-27T22:18:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T05:18:40","slug":"how-to-tell-if-a-process-is-packaged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/how-to-tell-if-a-process-is-packaged\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it MSIX? Part 1: How to Tell if a Process Is Packaged"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Overheard in a recent conversation:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>Enterprise Administrator:<\/em> &#8220;The &#42;&#42;&#42;redacted&#42;&#42;&#42; application is awesome, but it really should be an MSIX package.&#8221;<br \/>\n  <em>Microsoft Developer:<\/em> &#8220;Ummm, it already is.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That sparked another question: How can you tell if an application is <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/is-this-a-packaged-process\/\">packaged or unpackaged<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>Turns out there&#8217;s a few simple ways to check.<\/p>\n<p>The key difference between packaged and unpackaged processes is whether they have package identity. Task Manager provides a convenient way to quickly see this:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Run <code>taskmgr.exe<\/code><\/li>\n<li>On the left, select <strong>Details<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Right-click a column heading and select <strong>Select columns<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Select <strong>Package name<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Select <strong>OK<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The list of processes now shows <strong>Package name<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If the process is unpackaged, this field is blank.<\/li>\n<li>If the process is packaged, this field shows the package&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/msix-displayname-vs-package-identity\/\">Display Name<\/a><sup>1<\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For example:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/92\/2026\/09\/Is-it-MSIX-TaskManager.webp\" alt=\"Task Manager\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In this example, <code>AzVpnAppx.exe<\/code> is a packaged process with the display name <code>Azure VPN Client<\/code>, whereas <code>audiodg.exe<\/code> has no <strong>Package name<\/strong>, so it&#8217;s unpackaged.<\/p>\n<p>We also see <code>AzVpnSysTrayApp.exe<\/code> is a packaged process with the same display name as <code>AzVpnAppx.exe<\/code>. Display names are localized strings meant for human consumption, and thus <strong>aren&#8217;t guaranteed to be unique<\/strong>. They can be whatever the developer chooses to show.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><sup>1<\/sup> If Task Manager can&#8217;t resolve the package&#8217;s localized display name, the <strong>Package name<\/strong> column may instead show an <code>ms-resource:<\/code> value based on the <code>DisplayName<\/code> declared in <code>AppxManifest.xml<\/code>. Windows uses this resource reference to find the appropriate localized string rather than displaying the resource reference to the user.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Overheard in a recent conversation: Enterprise Administrator: &#8220;The &#42;&#42;&#42;redacted&#42;&#42;&#42; application is awesome, but it really should be an MSIX package.&#8221; Microsoft Developer: &#8220;Ummm, it already is.&#8221; That sparked another question: How can you tell if an application is packaged or unpackaged? Turns out there&#8217;s a few simple ways to check. The key difference between packaged [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":911,"featured_media":81,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,8,11,2,34,35],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-msix","tag-application","tag-architecture","tag-identity","tag-msix","tag-runtime","tag-tools"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Overheard in a recent conversation: Enterprise Administrator: &#8220;The &#42;&#42;&#42;redacted&#42;&#42;&#42; application is awesome, but it really should be an MSIX package.&#8221; Microsoft Developer: &#8220;Ummm, it already is.&#8221; That sparked another question: How can you tell if an application is packaged or unpackaged? Turns out there&#8217;s a few simple ways to check. The key difference between packaged [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/911"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions\/352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/insidemsix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}