If you opened the Settings app and found out that the option to Show most used apps is grayed out and you cannot change it in Windows 10, it can be related to your current privacy settings. Let's see how to resolve this issue.
Here is the problem:
The option "Show Most Used Apps" is available under Personalization -> Start in the Settings app. As you can see from the picture above, the user cannot enable or disable the "Show Most Used Apps" option, because it is locked and shown in gray. It is not obvious, but this problem can be fixed by changing your privacy settings.
Starting with Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft has added new privacy options to the OS. These are available under Settings -> Privacy. One of the options, "Let Windows track app launches to improve Start and search results", when disabled, prevents Windows 10 from keeping a history of app usage. It also turns off the Run history, and makes the "Show Most Used Apps" option unavailable for the user. To resolve the issue, you need to change your privacy options as follows.
To fix the issue "Show Most Used Apps Is Grayed Out in Windows 10", do the following.
- Open Settings.
- Go to Privacy - General (the default page in this section).
- On the right, look for the option Let Windows track app launches to improve Start and search results.
- Enable it if disabled.
That's it.
This way, you can clear your Run history as an alternative to the Registry method described HERE.
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Do you know the Group Policy settings for “Let Windows track app launches to improve Start and search results”?