Start PowerToys minimized when launching on Windows startup

[ItayShallev]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

An option to start PowerToys minimized so it won't pop up on the screen on system startup.

Scenario when this would be used?

When the option of launching PowerToys on system startup is enabled.

Supporting information

No response

[TheJoeFin]

What is popping up? can you share a /bugreport

[mu88]

I'm joining this issue as I don't want to file a very similar one/potential duplicate - please correct me if you'd prefer a dedicated issue.

I'm suffering from the problem that PowerToys does not launch when starting Windows. I use PowerToys v.0.79.0 and Windows 11 23H2 (OS Build 22631.3296). As you can see, Run at startup is enabled:

However, PowerToys are not started when launching Windows. Furthermore, there is no startup entry in the Windows settings:

So I've added a PowerToys shortcut to C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (shell:startup) and now PowerToys successfully start when launching Windows.
However, the PowerToys Settings Dashboard always pops up:

Please see the attached PowerToysReport_2024-03-30-13-57-48.zip.

PS: please note that my user has no admin privileges.

[ItayShallev]

What is popping up? can you share a /bugreport

This window:

[TheJoeFin]

Here are steps where I added PowerToys to the Task Scheduler to run when a user logs in. Try following these steps to startup automatically and do not add a link to the startup folder in Start or to the Startup section of the Windows Settings app or Task Manager. When I added this to Task Scheduler it started up PowerToys when I logged in and did not open any window.

Please try this and report back if the issue is resolved. /needinfo

Steps shown below:

1. Create new Task in Task Scheduler
2. Add an action to launch PowerToys.exe from "C:\Program Files\PowerToys\PowerToys.exe"
3. Add a trigger to run "At Log on"
4. Save

[mu88]

Thx for that hint @TheJoeFin

However, ideally, this can be described as a workaround, but not a solution. The goal should be for the Run at startup button in PowerToys to do what it should do, i. e. start PowerToys when the system starts up.