If your PC has been experiencing strange boot times lately or stuck idle at the home screen after you’ve fired it up then all those background apps enabled at startup on Windows 10 could be the culprit here. There are certain apps that require permissions to initiate as soon as your PC boots up and mostly you might not even be aware of such circumstances. Some of the common apps that can have a noticeable impact on your PC’s overall performance and boot up latency include but are not limited to iTunes, Adobe Creative Cloud, Spotify, Steam, etc.

Two ways that can help you disable apps at startup on Windows 10

Using the Settings:

Open the Start menu and type settings in the search bar. Click on the Settings app to proceed.

Select the Apps tab in the Settings menu.

Click on the Startup tab at the bottom in the Apps menu.

You can now view all of the programs that are installed on your PC and those which are enabled to initiate at bootup. You can also view the impact that they can have on your PC from a scale of High to Medium and Low impact.

Simply click on the toggle to turn off the desired app which has the highest impact on your PC’s startup performance and output in general.

Using the Task Manager:

Press the Windows key + X and select Task Manager from the menu that pop-up from the taskbar.

Switch to the Startup tab in the Task Manager.

All of the programs that are enabled or disabled to initiate at startup on Windows 10 will be listed down in the Startup menu. This is also accompanied by the Startup impact of the program on your PC which is determined via the criteria that are listed down in the table at the end of this guide.

Click on the app that you wish to disable.

Click on the Disable button at the bottom right corner of the Task Manager.

You can now view the status of the app as disabled. Click on the Enable button to revert the changes that you made by enabling the app on startup again on Windows 10.

You can save up on a noticeable amount of power consumption and improve performance of your PC by disabling the apps at startup on Windows 10.