How to disable Zoom from automatically running on Windows startup?

Here’s a note we got from Bryan:

I have a Windows computer which i use for work. I typically use Microsoft Teams, but i have a good customer that uses Zoom, so i have downloaded the software to my computer. As i seldom use Zoom, i prefer that it won’t run in the background. I am 100% fine invoking it manually when needed for my client meetings. So my question is whether i can turn Zoom off by default so it it will not pop up when i start up my Windows based laptop.

Hey, thanks for the question. In this short post, we will look into two simple options to stop Zoom from starting up when you turn on your Windows personal computer.

Turn off Zoom auto start on Windows

  • First off, go ahead and open the Zoom desktop application
  • In the Home tab, hit the Settings cog (at your right hand side).
  • Then navigate to the General tab.
  • Then go ahead and uncheck the option named Start Zoom when starting Windows as shown below:

Alternatively, you can can use the Task Manager to delete Zoom from your Windows startup:

  • From your Windows 10 task bar, hit the Start button.
  • Type Task Manager and hit Enter.
  • Navigate to the Startup tab.
  • Scroll down towards the end of the list, and highlight the Zoom Meetings entry.
  • Now make a right click and select Disable.

  • Close the Task Manager.

Exit Zoom Meetings for the current session

The procedure detailed above prevents Zoom from running on startup, but now you might want to shutdown Zoom in your current Windows session. If so, you might want to exit Zoom from the system tray.

  • In the Windows Task Bar, hit the System tray upward facing arrow.
  • This will open the Windows System tray.
  • Next right click the Zoom icon.
  • Select Exit.
  • Zoom will now shutdown for the current session. Remember that you can open it up as needed for your customer interactions using the Windows Start Menu.

Turning off Zoom Meetings on macOS

Thanks for the question. Yes, disabling Zoom autostart is possible and quite easy. We’ll cobver two ways which you can use to accomplish that.

The easy way: Using the macOS dock

  1. Login into your macbook.
  2. Ensure that Zoom meetings application is turned on.
  3. Go to your desktop. In the application dock (which by default is on the lower part of your desktop), right click the Zoom icon
  4. Then select the Option entry and uncheck Open at Login
  5. This will prevent Zoom from automatically launching when you turn on your macbook.
  6. At this point, you can close the zoom app.

More elaborated: Using the macOS System preferences

An alternative (although more elaborated and less recommended) way is to set the Users & Group auto-login items as needed. This process assumes that you have permission in macOS to carry out admin tasks for your user.

  1. Hit the Apple icon on your upper task bar.
  2. Hit System Preferences.
  3. In the System Preferences dialog, hit Users & Groups.
  4. On the left hand side, pick your user.
  5. Then hit the Login Items button.
  6. Highlight the ZoomOpener item in your list.
  7. At the bottom of the dialog hit the minus(-) sign.
  8. Close the Users & Groups dialog.

Turning on Zoom on startup

If you start using Zoom more often, you can easily ensure it starts automatically when you turn on your computer. The easiest way to resume Zoom auto-launching is to use the first option outlined above, just ensuring to check the Open at Login entry

Hopefully it helped, feel free to leave a comment in case of follow up questions.

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