How to Add Programs to your Startup Folder in Windows 10

What is the purpose of this folder?

After the Windows operating system is booted up, some programs will start up immediately and some of them only just after a short delay. A folder containing these files is called the startup folder in the Windows environment.

The wonderful news is that we can place shortcuts pointing to a program in this directory ourselves, so after Windows starts, only the programs that we want will startup. Benefits: faster operating system setup time after boot, no unnecessary and annoying pop-ups that need to be manually closed one by one.

Where can I find the Startup Folder? Where is the location?

You can navigate to the current user‘s startup folder by the following path:


Please note, you need to set manually the username after the second slash character in the path. You can find your username by clicking on the windows button then hover your mouse to the account icon (see blue rectangle on the next picture)

Or press Windows button + R ( run dialog box ) and type shell:startup and press the Enter

Other, same methods:



shell:common startup

How can I add a program to the Startup Folder?

The easiest way to manage your programs in your startup folder is to use shortcuts (icons). You can create a shortcut for any program just press right click, select new and select shortcut.

Please note, you need to create the shortcut from this folder, or you can also copy other shortcuts to this folder.

Now you need to set a location where the shortcut will point at. You can do this by pressing the ‘Browse‘ button during the Create Shortcut dialog.

At this very moment you should see the freshly created file in your (startup) folder.

Good to know, the shortcut file extension is lnk (LNK). It is used by the Microsoft operating system to point to an executable file. LNK is the short form of LINK. It’s just a direct link. The easiest way to find a shortcut is to check a mini arrow icon on the icon. Of course there is an option to hide this arrow symbol.

Disable or enable programs in the Windows settings

It’s recommended to check your Startup Apps in the System settings.
In order to do this just click on the windows icon on your desktop or press directly the windows button.

Start to type the Startup Apps keywords.
Finish the search by pressing the Enter.

A new window will appear. You can set the rest of the programs that run after the OS has been booted in directly from here.

If you have too many elements in your list you can use the sort function. You can sort the programs by: Name, Status, Impact Rate.

You will also see the application name, it’s icon, state and impact rate.

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