Add Web Site to All Apps in Start Menu in Windows 10

How to Add a Web Site to All Apps in the Start Menu in Windows 10

Windows 10 comes with a completely reworked Start menu, which combines Live Tiles introduced in Windows 8 with classic app shortcuts. It has an adaptive design and can be used on displays with various sizes and resolutions. In this article, we'll see how to add any web site to the All Apps area of the Start menu, where most of the app shortcuts are stored. This works even for web sites which do not provide Progressive Web Apps.

The Start Menu in Windows 10

Windows 10 comes with a completely reworked Start menu, which combines Live Tiles introduced in Windows 8 with classic app shortcuts. It has an adaptive design and can be used on displays with various sizes and resolutions.

Starting in Windows 10 May 2019 Update, also known as 'version 1903' and '19H1', the Start menu has got its own process that allows it to appear faster, increases its reliability. Besides that, there are a number of usability improvements made to the Start menu.

Windows 10 Start Menu has Live Tile support for Universal (Store) apps installed on your PC. When you pin such an app to the Start menu, its Live Tile will show dynamic content like news, weather forecast, images and so on. For example, you can add a useful data usage Live Tile.

Starting in version 1909, also known as November 2019 Update, the Start Menu expands automatically once you hover over icons on the left. This new behavior is something that some users do not like. See Disable Start Menu Auto Expand On Mouse Over in Windows 10

Customizing the Start Menu

Traditionally, Windows allows you to customize the Start menu for all users of the PC or only for your account. You can add a shortcut to any program to the Start menu. Also, you can put there a web site, to it will accessible from the Start menu at any moment.

Before you continue, it is worth mentioning that the Start menu in Windows 10 can't display more than 2048 items. To measure how many items you have in the Start menu, refer to the article

How many Start menu shortcuts you have in Windows 10.

In short, you need to open PowerShell and type or copy-paste the following command:

Get-StartApps | measure

See the "Count" line in the output.

Also, some folders mentioned in the article are hidden. You need to turn on Hidden Files in File Explorer to see them.

Finally, the All Apps area can be disabled. You may need to enable it.

To Add a Web Site to All Apps in the Start Menu in Windows 10,

1. Type or copy-paste the following line in File Explorer's address bar:%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

   

2. Hit the Enter key to open the folder containing Start menu shortcuts for your user account. These shortcuts are visible in the Start menu when you are signed in with your own account and not visible to other users of your computer.
3. Right-click anywhere on the empty space to create a new shortcut. Select New > Shortcut from the right-click menu.
4. In the shortcut target box, type or paste the site URL you want to create a shortcut to.
5. Change the shortcut name and its icon if required.

You are done!

Note: App groups in All Apps are represented by folders. To create a new group, just create a new folder with any name you wish and put your favorite shortcuts here.

Also, if you delete some shortcut, it will disappear from the Start menu from your user account only.

Add a Web Site to All Apps in the Start Menu For All Users

1. Type or copy-paste the following line to File Explorer's address bar: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs.
2. Press the Enter key to open the folder containing Start menu shortcuts for all users. These shortcuts are visible in the Start menu for all users of your computer.
3. Right-click anywhere on the empty space to create a new shortcut. Select New > Shortcut from the right-click menu.
4. In the shortcut target box, type or paste the site URL you want to create a shortcut to.
5. Change the shortcut name and its icon if required.

You are done. Again, shortcuts and subfolders you create here will be visible for all users.

The methods described above are obvious and must be well known. Alternatively, you can use browsers to achieve the same.

Using Browsers

The classic Edge (EdgeHTML, deprecated but still available in stable Windows 10 versions)  has Menu (Alt + F) > More Tools > Pin this site to Start. This adds a tile to the Start menu in Windows 10.

The new Chromium-based Edge allows pinning web sites to the taskbar and installing progressive apps. Check out the following:

Finally, good old Internet Explorer allows directly adding web sites to the Start menu under Apps, exactly what we were doing manually above. In Internet Explorer, you can click on the gear icon in the toolbar, and select Add site to Apps from the menu!

That's it!