How to Stop Apps From Starting Automatically in Windows 10

Have you noticed that certain Apps now open up after a restart, even though they’re not configured to automatically start with Windows? This overview will explain how to stop programs from opening on their own when Windows 10 boots up.

Microsoft added this “feature” to a recent update in Windows 10 – to disable it, just follow the steps outlined below.

1. Click the Start button and navigate to the Settings option.
2. Select the Accounts category.
3. From the list of options in the left column, select Sign-in options
4. Now scroll down to the Privacy section and toggle the Use my sign-in info to automatically finish setting up my device after an update or restart switch to Off. Note: if your version of Windows 10 doesn’t have this option, skip down to the Power Off via Shutdown section.
5. From now on, only the programs that you’ve specifically configured to start at boot will launch when Windows 10 starts.

Power Off via Shutdown

At this point in time it’s not entirely clear exactly which versions of Windows have this feature and which versions allow you to disable it via the method outlined above. If your version of Windows doesn’t include the Use my sign-in info to automatically finish setting up my device after an update or restart option, your other choice is to create a shortcut to the shutdown.exe program that comes included with Windows. When you run this shortcut, your computer will Power Off (or Restart, depending on which shortcut you use) and no programs will re-open when Windows 10 starts up.

1. Right-click on your Desktop (you can move the shortcut file elsewhere later) and select New and then Shortcut
2. In the space provided, enter the text:

   shutdown.exe /s /t 0

3. Give your newly created shortcut a name, ideally a descriptive one along the lines of Shutdown
4. Now you have to get in the habit of using this shortcut to turn your computer off instead of via the ‘usual’ method.
5. If you’d like to have a shortcut that restarts your computer instead of just powering it off (so you can have one for each action), create another shortcut but this time use the text:

   shutdown.exe /r /t 0

6. You may also want to change the rather bland/boring icons that your newly created shortcuts use. And what do you know – we have step-by-step guide on changing shortcut icons, too ;)