One of the new features in Windows 11/10 is the ability to automatically launch applications after a restart. This was one of the most required features of Windows 11/10. Once you hit Restart or you restart your computer after a software installation or maybe after an Update, all the open windows are closed, and you need to start fresh. But with this latest update, this is not the case.
You might have experienced this feature already. It was being used in Windows Update to speed up the update process by using your sign-in info to finish setting up your computer. This feature has been extended to ‘Restart’ in Windows 11/10. It supports restarts from anywhere within the Windows UI and updates – but nothing can be said about third-party software that can restart or shut down your computer.
Automatically sign-in after restarting Windows 11/10
Get me up to date in Windows 11
To automatically sign-in after a Restart or Update Windows 11, do the following:
- Open Windows 11 Settings
- Select Windows Update settings
- Click on Advanced options
- Here, toggle the Get me up to date switch to On.
- Restart your computer.
Use my sign-in info to automatically finish setting up my device after an update or restart in Windows 10
In Windows 10, this feature is placed in ‘Settings’ and is enabled by default. To change it, go to ‘Settings’ and then select ‘Accounts’. Now go to ‘Sign–In Options’ and scroll down to find ‘Use my sign–in info to automatically finish setting up my device after an update or restart’ under ‘Privacy’. You can turn on/off this feature at your convenience.
Enabling this feature will preserve all your opened applications and their corresponding resources during a Windows restart. Depending upon the performance of your computer, it might take a little while to re-open the applications after a restart. I noticed a little lag after I restarted my computer, but it didn’t take much longer, and all the applications were right there as it is.
Other than this feature, two new shutdown switches have been introduced. You can check them out by typing the following commands in CMD:
- shutdown /sg: Shutdown the computer and restart apps on the next start.
- shutdown /g: Restart the computer and automatically open applications.
The only thing I didn’t like was that the feature was not capable of preserving the desktops. So, some of the windows opened in Desktop 2 were started in Desktop 1 after the restart. But it won’t take that effort to move them back to Desktop 2 as compared to starting them from scratch. Also, a few applications like Sublime and CMD were not started automatically.
Most of the common accessibility applications were able to start automatically, but some were not. The reason behind this is that these applications might not have registered for application restart.
