Question: I know, I just can hit `Super`+`A` to see all installed apps in Ubuntu, but I need a command to list their names. The command

```
dpkg --get-selections | awk '{print $1}'

```

is also not an option because it shows all installed packages and it contains drivers, kernels and libraries.

Answer: 
To get the list of all your installed applications with their names, the easiest way is to do:

```
sudo apt-get install aptitude
aptitude -F' * %p -> %d ' --no-gui --disable-columns search '?and(~i,!?section(libs), !?section(kernel), !?section(devel))'

```

It will get you a nice list of all installed packages that are not libraries, not kernels, not development package like this:

```
* zip -> Archiver for .zip files 
* zlib1g -> compression library - runtime 
* zlib1g-dev -> compression library - development 
* zsh -> shell with lots of features 
* zsh-common -> architecture independent files for Zsh 

```

It's more complete since it also lists non-GUI applications that won't appear in the `.desktop` files
Run the below command to see all the installed applications,

```
ls /usr/share/applications | awk -F '.desktop' ' { print $1}' -

```

If you want to get the list of all installed applications, then run the below command,

```
ls /usr/share/applications | awk -F '.desktop' ' { print $1}' - > ~/Desktop/applications.txt

```

It will stores the above command output to `applications.txt` file inside your `~/Desktop` directory.

### OR

Also run the below command on terminal to list the installed applications,

```
find /usr/share/applications -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec basename {} .desktop \; | sort

```

To get the list in text file, run the below command

```
find /usr/share/applications -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec basename {} .desktop \; | sort > ~/Desktop/applications.txt

```

Desktop entries for all the installed applications are stored inside `/usr/share/applications` directory, where file names are in the format of `application-name.desktop`.Removing the `.desktop` part from the file names will give you the total list of installed applications.

**Update:**

[As @Radu suggested](https://askubuntu.com/questions/433609/how-can-i-list-all-applications-installed-in-my-system/433761?noredirect=1#comment566116_433619), you can also find desktop entries for your additional installed applications inside `~/.local/share/applications` directory.

```
find /usr/share/applications ~/.local/share/applications -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec basename {} .desktop \;

```