I'm upgrading to the next release of Elementary OS and want an easy way to restore all the applications I have installed. While there is a provision for restoring AppCenter purchases documented here, I did not find anything in the Elementary release upgrade guide dealing with free apps.
1 Answer
Ryan M. in the Elementary OS slack community suggested using the 'flatpak list' console command, great idea.
I searched online and found this technique:
1 - Backup all your flatpak apps:
flatpak list --columns=application --app > flatpaks.txt Here you are saving all your installed apps to a text file, without the dependencies/runtimes (they are downloaded automatically anyways).
2 - Install your apps in the new machine/installation:
xargs flatpak install -y < flatpaks.txt
Darshak P. from the slack also informs that "in case you have a separate /home partition, just reusing it in the new installation will keep all user flatpaks intact without you having to do anything."