When you try to log off, shutdown or restart your PC, Windows 10 will give you the chance to save your work before gracefully closing all open programs. To proceed with the shutdown or restart process, you have to click on Shut down anyway. If you don’t take any action for a minute, it will bring you back to the desktop.

Once you get into the habit of saving your work before shutting down or restarting your computer, you can use a registry tweak to force Windows 10 to automatically close all apps without any prompt at shutdown, restart or log off, which helps saving valuable time.

Configure Windows 10 to Automatically Close Applications at Shutdown or Restart

1. To start, you’ll need to use the Registry Editor. To open it, press Windows + R on your keyboard and then type regedit, hit Enter.

   

2. Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. In the left pane, right-click on the Desktop key and select New -> String Value.

   

3. Name the new string AutoEndTasks, then double-click it and set the value data to 1. Click OK and restart your PC to apply the changes.

   

4. The next time you shut down, restart, or log out of your user account, Windows 10 will automatically close all running apps no matter if there is any unsaved work.

If you ever want to revert back, either delete the registry string AutoEndTasks or change the value data back to 0, Windows 10 will use the default setting instead.