When kickstarting your workday, the process of booting up your computer and manually launching each essential application can be a cumbersome chore. Every day, perhaps you rely on applications like Chrome for browsing, Paint for quick edits, Calculator for swift calculations, and Outlook to check your emails. Having to find each of these programs individually and double-clicking to initiate them can eat into your productive time. What if there was a way to initiate all these at once with just a single click? Enter the world of batch files. In Windows operating systems, batch files play the pivotal role of scripting multiple tasks. They contain a sequence of commands for the command-line interpreter (CLI) to execute in a particular order. Leveraging this, you can effortlessly craft a batch file that, when activated, will spring all your crucial applications to life in an instant. Though it might sound technical, the process is pretty straightforward. In this risewindows guide, we’ll walk you through the steps to launch multiple apps at once on Windows 11/10, turning your daily application startup routine into a breeze.
How to Launch Multiple Apps at once on Windows 11/10?
Firstly, you’ll need to collect the paths of the apps you want to open on your PC. Then, you will create a batch file.
Step 1. At first, click the Start button at the taskbar and locate the app you want to add to the script. Then, right-click your app and select Open file location from the menu.
Step 2. Now, in File Explorer, you will see the app is highlighted. Right-click the app’s icon, and from the menu that opens, select Properties.
Step 3. When the “Properties” window opens, click the Target field and press Ctrl + A from the keyboard to select all. Then press Ctrl + C to copy the value of this field.
Step 4. After that, open any text editor like Notepad, Wordpad, or MS Word. Then, use the Ctrl + V keyboard shortcut to paste the copied data.
Repeat the above steps and collect the path of all the programs you want to add to the batch file.
Step 5. Next, open a Notepad file when you note down all your favorite app’s paths.
To open the Notepad, press the Windows + R keys from the keyboard. In the Run box, type “notepad” and then hit Enter from the keyboard.
Step 5. When Notepad opens, copy the following code in the Notepad file using Ctrl + C (To copy) and Ctrl + V (To paste):-
@echo off cd "PATH" start APP
Step 6. Now, in the above code that you pasted in Notepad, replace “PATH” with the “path” to your app and “APP” with the executable file name of your app.
For instance, if the Edge executable path is:-
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe"
Then, to use it, you will replace “PATH” in the code with the following:-
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\"
Next, replace the APP with the following:-
msedge.exe
Here, you need to repeat the steps for all your other apps. If you choose Edge and Chrome to open at once, your code should look like the following:-
@echo off cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\" start msedge.exe cd "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\" start chrome.exe
At the end of your code, type the following to close Command Prompt:-
exit
Lastly, your code should look like this:-
@echo off cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\" start msedge.exe cd "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\" start chrome.exe exit
Step 7. Once it is complete, in the Notepad’s menu bar, click File > Save As.
Step 8. After completing the above steps, File Explorer will open. Select All Files from the drop-down menu of “Save as type.” Name the file, and then after the file name, type .bat. Then, click the Save button.
After completing the above steps, you should see a batch file in the specified location.
Double-clicking on the created batch file will open all your favorite programs. If you want to add or remove the applications from the batch file, right-click on the file and select the “Edit” option. Add or remove relevant lines from programs. When editing is complete, save the file by clicking the Ctrl + S buttons.
Also Read: How to Update Apps using Winget on Windows 11 or 10?
Conclusion
Creating a batch file to open multiple applications with a single click is a practical way to enhance your daily productivity on Windows 11/10. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can save time during your computer’s boot-up and get straight to work with all your essential apps ready to use. Plus, with the flexibility of editing the batch file whenever necessary, you’re always in control of which applications open.
