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How to move or remove apps in All Apps in the Windows 10 start menu

If you have had time to use the preview build of Windows 10 on a machine you may have noticed the new start menu right away.

While not identical to the Windows 7 start menu, it is a compromise that brings the old (desktop programs) and the new (apps and live tiles) together.

What you may have noticed as well is that you cannot move or remove apps when you open the all apps listing. Here you find listed all installed apps and desktop programs.

While it is possible to uninstall third-party apps to remove them from the start menu, it is not possible to do the same for native applications such as the Camera, Calendar or Calculator application.

To make matters worse, it is also not possible to move those apps in a folder to make room for desktop programs.

The start menu itself does not offer any options but there is a manual workaround. Here is what you need to do:

  1. You find all application shortcuts listed under C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Application Shortcuts/
  2. To display that folder in File Explorer make sure you enable the display of hidden files and folders with a click on View > Hidden Items.
  3. The folder lists all installed applications.
  4. Create a new folder in there and call it apps.
  5. Move all applications that you don't want to see in the start menu's all apps listings root into that folder.

This is the first part of the operation. When you log off and on again or restart the explorer.exe process, you will notice that those apps shortcuts are no longer listed under All Apps. Search won't find them either however.

windows 10 start menu cleanup

We are creating a new folder under All Apps in the second part of this tutorial and add shortcuts to apps that we want to run on the system in there.

  • Open the folder C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\ in File Explorer and make sure the new apps folder that you have created is also open.
  • Right-click there and select New > Shortcut from the context menu.
  • The target of the shortcut begins with explorer.exe shell:Appsfolder\ all the time and ends with !App
  • The middle part is taken from the apps folder name under Application Shortcuts.
  • You can simply paste the full folder name in there most of the time.

Examples:

Disney's Frozen Free Fall's folder name is Disney.FrozenFreeFall_6rarf9sa4v8jt

The shortcut to the app is explorer.exe shell:Appsfolder\Disney.FrozenFreeFall_6rarf9sa4v8jt!app

Microsoft's Bing Finance app folder name is Microsoft.BingFinance_8wekyb3d8bbwe

The shortcut to the app is explorer.exe shell:Appsfolder\Microsoft.BingFinance_8wekyb3d8bbwe!app

Note:

When an app gets updated, it is listed in the root folder again and it is up to you to repeat the process to remove it again.

This article was first seen on ComTek's "TekBits" Technology News

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