Home
How-To

How to add a Program or Application to startup menu in Windows 🔟


What is the startup menu?

You might have listened to people saying or recommending you to disable useless startup programs in your PC to boost your PC speed and decrease your boot time(time taken to start the PC) . Startup programs or startup menu is the list of programs or apps which start along with your windows when you boot. For example your audio driver.

So if you want to remove an app you can just right-click and disable it but what if you want to add a program to the startup menu or list by your own. For example your favorite music file (mp3) or any application you want like your daily work app.

So let's start:

How to add an app or program to the Startup menu?

Follow the following steps:

  1. Create a desktop shortcut of the app which you want or if the shortcut is already there then just right click and copy the shortcut (Ctrl+c)

  2. Now press Win key + r  key combination, it will open the run command   
  3. Now in the run command box type in this text: 
    shell:startup
    (ensure that it is typed correctly or just copy-paste the text from here)
  4. A new window will appear. Just drag the shortcut from your desktop to the windows and paste it.
  5. Now close the window. 

Now to confirm it is added to startup menu. Just right click the taskbar and select task manager or press Ctrl+shift+esc key combination

Now in the top you can see different sections. Go to "startup" section and you can see your program added.


how to remove the added program

If you want to remove you can just again type:

shell:startup
in the Run command dialog box and the windows will appear select your app and delete it.
If you just want to disable it then open task manager and go to the Startup menu as shown above and select your app/program. Now you see Disable option in the bottom right of the task manager window.

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions then feel free to ask in a comment or in our Quora space.

Hi, My name is Sohaib. I like to write content on Tech and Spread more and more knowledge about Tech. I know about Windows, Android, and Cybersecurity. Follow my Blog to receive constant updates about my articles on Tech.