You’re waiting and waiting, ready to rock and roll on your Windows 11 laptop, but it’s taking forever. OK, maybe not forever, but long enough that you’re tempted to pick up your phone and start scrolling.
The reason for a sluggish launch time could be all the startup applications that, well, start up when you sign on to Windows 11. They’re not necessarily bloatware, but you probably don’t use them all regularly. The more apps that launch during startup, the more bogged down your system gets, even after your computer has started up.
Some applications that launch automatically on system start could be antivirus programs, Microsoft OneDrive, Slack, gaming apps, backup and synchronization tools or webcam software. Some apps are designed to start up immediately, and others can be configured to do so.
If you want your machine to launch faster and you’re not using all of these applications, then you’ll need to prevent them from starting up automatically. The good news is that there are three easy ways to do it: Task Manager, Settings or File Explorer.
Use Task Manager to restrict startup apps
You’ll see the same startup applications listed here as you will in Settings, and you can configure them to start up or not start up, with Windows 11 as effectively with either method.
To get to Task Manager, right-click on the Start icon, usually located to the left of the search bar at the bottom of the screen. Click on the hamburger menu (three stacked lines or dots) at the top left of the Task Manager window. You can also search for Settings in the search bar.
Then, click Startup apps in the menu. You’ll see a list of all the apps that start when you boot up Windows 11. Right-click on any of them to either Enable or Disable them on startup.
The cool thing about Task Manager is you can see the startup impact of each app, shown in the far right. Startup impact might be high, medium, low, none or not measured. The bigger the impact, the longer it will take for Windows to fully start.
For example, Microsoft explains that for high impact apps, «Total CPU usage takes more than 1 second or total disk usage is more than 3 megabytes.»
Turn off apps at launch with Windows 11 Settings
Another way to enable or disable apps at startup is by using the Settings app. Right-click on the Start icon, then find the Settings menu or search for Settings in the search bar next to the Start icon.
Click on Settings, click on Apps in the menu at left, then click on Startup. You can then toggle off the apps that you don’t want starting automatically when you sign in.
In the apps list in Settings, you might encounter a message, «We couldn’t find this app,» in place of an application name. This could be because an app is on a removable drive or a network drive, or the path to that app might not exist. It’s also possible it is from an app that was uninstalled, so you could try to reinstall it. Select the icon next to the app’s on/off toggle to find out more about the missing app.
You can also use File Explorer to remove startup apps
Some apps will not appear in Task Manager or Settings. Instead, you’ll need to disable them in File Explorer.
First, right-click on the Start icon and select Run. When the Run dialogue box pops up, type shell:appsfolder and select Enter. A File Explorer window will then open, showing a list of all the applications that are installed on the device. Keep this first window open.
Next, right-click on the Start icon again and select Run. In the Run dialog box, type either shell:startup or shell:common startup and select Enter. A second File Explorer window will open, showing a list of applications that start automatically when a user signs in.
Drag and drop the applications that you want to start automatically from the first window to the second one. If you want to remove applications from the startup folder, delete the links from the second window.
How to decide whether to disable apps at Windows startup
You probably have apps that you don’t use, such as games apps, chat apps or cloud storage sync tools. Examples might include Microsoft Teams, Xbox and Copilot. Apps that you should keep enabled are security software (such as Defender, Norton, or McAfee) as well as certain drives and core system components.
If you are unsure about disabling a certain app, you can right-click on it and select Search online to find out what it does.
Typically, disabling a startup application won’t harm your computer. You can disable an app and then determine if the computer boots up without trouble. If you have an issue, try to enable that app again. Using the above methods, it’s just as easy to Enable as to Disable startup applications.
Third-party startup managers
If you want to dive deeper, you could consider using a third-party startup manager. Autoruns (from Microsoft), Startup Delayer, Starter, StartupLite, WhatInStartup and other software can show you which apps start up when you sign in to Windows 11, as well as browser extensions, scheduled tasks, drivers and more.
Previous Windows versions
Enabling or disabling startup applications is not only a Windows 11 feature. You can use the same methods on previous Windows versions (though Microsoft would strongly prefer you upgrade to Windows 11).