How do programs that don't appear in the startup folder auto-execute on startup?

Question

Just out of curiosity I was wondering how this is done. I know you can probably manually make a program startup using windows scheduler, but for something download from the interwebs, such as Discord, how does it autonomously give itself the ability to run on startup without actually being in the startup folder?

Answer 1

Some applications do not appear in the startup folder but start up automatically anyway. Programmers have the ability to disable their application showing up in the startup folder. To answer your question, it's a decision made by the dev team behind the application. Here is a link to disable those applications using the shell: Disable items not in the Startup folder

This article goes into depth about how windows uses registry keys to open applications upon startup.

If you would like to disable discord's auto startup, this is how.

Answer 2

I found the answer elsewhere on this site, here is the link and a quote https://stackoverflow.com/a/20781275/9546874

Add a new startup application Open your registry and find the key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run].

For each program you want to start automatically create a new string value using a descriptive name, and set the value of the string to the program executable.

For example, to automatically start Notepad, add a new entry of "Notepad"="c:\\windows\\notepad.exe".