How to Prevent Microsoft Edge From Opening Automatically

When you boot up your computer, you generally want it to launch as quickly as possible. If you always or almost always use a program, you may want it to launch automatically when you sign in. It can, however, be really annoying if a program does this when you don’t want to use it. Not only do you have to manually close the program every time, but launching it also slows down your boot-up time a bit.

Annoyingly, the Edge browser can occasionally set itself to launch automatically on start-up. This may be OK if you like the Edge browser and want to use it. With only 4% of the browser market share, however, this is likely not the case. Thankfully, you can prevent Edge and other programs from launching automatically when you sign in.

How to prevent Edge from launching automatically

To prevent apps from launching at system start-up, you need to open Task Manager. The easiest way to do this is to press Ctrl+Shift+Esc. Alternatively, you can press the Windows key, type “Task Manager”, then press enter.

In Task Manager, switch to the “Start-up” tab.

Tip: If you can’t see any tabs, you’re likely in the simplified view. Click the “More details” arrow in the bottom right corner to open the full Task Manager view.

In the Start-up tab, you can see a list of all programs which are configured to launch when you sign in. Find Edge in the list of programs, right-click it and then click “Disable”. This will prevent Edge from starting automatically on system boot-up.

Tip: It’s recommended that you review the list of software that starts automatically with Windows. Some software, such as audio drivers are important to allow. You may not want other software, such as Skype, automatically launching though. Just remember you can always manually launch the programs even if you prevent them from launching automatically.