When you turn on your PC, various apps also start immediately. That can be handy: you can directly browse the internet or listen to music via Spotify. Startup programs can also make your computer unnecessarily slow. That’s why it’s a good idea to check your startup programs every once in a while. In this article we explain how to do that in Windows 11.
To gain insight into which apps are active immediately after starting up your PC, you need to open the Settings app. In the left menu you will find the option apps. Click in this menu on Startup to get an overview of apps that start automatically when you log in to your computer. Behind the apps you see an On/Off button, with which you can determine whether or not the relevant app should start at the same time as your PC.
You can also see how much influence the app has on the performance of your computer. If you disable a startup program that exerts a lot of influence on your PC, you may notice that your computer is immediately a lot less slow.
Add your own apps
It is possible that you cannot find certain apps that you have installed in the overview of startup programs. Especially programs that were released before Windows 8 are in Windows 11 (as well as in older versions of the OS) have been overlooked. You can manually add these apps to the list, but it’s a bit cumbersome.
On your keyboard, press the Windows key + R to launch the Run menu. In the search bar next to To open fill you shell:startup and press Enter or OK. Right-click anywhere in the window that appears and select New and then before Shortcut. Then specify the location of the app and click Next one to go on. You should now find the app in the list of launchers.
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Turn everything off?
In principle, you can disable all startup programs: your computer will work fine without them. Despite this, some apps are of course more important than others. For example, tools that automatically synchronize data with the cloud, such as OneDrive, iCloud or Google Drive, are useful to leave on. If you don’t do that and you forget to turn on the services manually, your data will not be synced. Hardware manufacturers also have a knack for putting apps on your PC that you don’t need every day. So take a critical look at the apps you actually use to determine whether they should actually start up when you log in to your PC.
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