Refresh an AppLocker policy

• Applies to:

  ✅ Windows 11, ✅ Windows 10

This article for IT professionals describes the steps to force an update for an AppLocker policy.

If you update the rule collection on a local computer by using the Local Security Policy snap-in, the policy takes effect immediately. If Group Policy is used to distribute the AppLocker policy and you want to immediately implement the policy, you must manually refresh the policy. The Group Policy refresh might take several minutes, depending upon the number of policies within the Group Policy Object (GPO) and the number of target computers.

To use Group Policy to distribute the AppLocker policy change, you need to retrieve the deployed AppLocker policy first. To prepare for the update and subsequent refresh, see Edit an AppLocker policy and Use the AppLocker Windows PowerShell cmdlets.

To complete this procedure, you must have Edit Setting permission to edit a GPO. By default, members of the Domain Admins group, the Enterprise Admins group, and the Group Policy Creator Owners group have this permission.

To manually refresh the AppLocker policy by using Group Policy

1. From a command prompt, type gpupdate /force, and then press ENTER.
2. When the command finishes, close the command prompt window, and then verify that the intended rule behavior is correct. You can do this verification by checking the AppLocker event logs for events that include "policy applied."

For information about updating existing rules, see Edit AppLocker rules. For information about creating a new rule for an existing policy, see:

• Create a rule that uses a publisher condition
• Create a rule that uses a file hash condition
• Create a rule that uses a path condition

Membership in the local Administrators group, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure.

To refresh the AppLocker policy on the local computer

• Update the rule collection by using the Local Security Policy console with one of the following procedures:

  • Edit AppLocker rules
  • Delete an AppLocker rule
  • Add exceptions for an AppLocker rule

When finished, the policy is in effect.

To make the same change on another device, you can use any of the following methods:

• From the device where you made the change, export the AppLocker policy and then import into onto the other device. To do these tasks, use the AppLocker Export Policy and Import Policy features to copy the rules from the changed computer.

Warning

When importing rules from another computer, all the rules will be applied, not just the one that was updated. Merging policies allows both existing and updated (or new) rules to be applied.

• Merge AppLocker policies. For information on the procedures to do this merging, see Merge AppLocker policies manually and Merge AppLocker policies by using Set-ApplockerPolicy.