How can I add programs to the All Apps start menu list?

That's pretty much what I've been trying to say - I couldn't find the Powershell script I had before, but I dis find this on MSDN. It might describe the timedate stamp a little better than I did. This goes back to Win8 and is specific to customizing Start with XML.

Still it might make things more clear. The key is the lastwritetime and the PowerShell updates that with the current time.

To use the script, you'lll have to change it to accept a parameter or modify it with the real name of the shortcut (.lnk)

Step 7. Refresh your shortcut file

If your app is already installed, you must nudge your shortcut after the new or updated .VisualElementsManifest.xml is in place or it will be ignored.

The following Windows PowerShell command example for the fictional Contoso app is one model for how to accomplish this, although there are many ways that it can be done.

Code:

(ls "$env:programdata\microsoft\windows\start menu\programs\contoso.lnk").lastwritetime = get-date

Source

That's all I have - good luck.

Mercarcher said:

I made this for the windows community support forums and figured I might as well link it here as well.

Thank you very much Mercarcher for a very exact pinpoint of this behavior.
The behavior is annoying from my point of view: Writing installation programs and instructions on how to open my programs. I think that shortcuts placed under Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs should always show up under "All Apps". No matter if they are also a tile.

I did some more testing and can add that

• The behavior is the same with the Windows 10 anniversary update (1607), for which I have also found that:
• Restarting Windows after removing the tile but before copying to Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs does not help. Same problem.
• If you do it in the more normal order: FIRST add to Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs (often done by an installation program), THEN the user pins the shortcut to Start so a tile is shown you get a good behavior: The shortcut is BOTH shown as a tile AND shown under "All Apps" (I keep the term "All Apps" even though after the anniversary upgrade "All Apps" is now always visible as the second to the left column in the start menu). And if then the user then chooses to remove the tile, the shortcut is still shown under "All apps".
• If more than one shortcut to the same exe file is placed under Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs then only one of them is shown under "All Apps". This seems to apply even if the shortcuts have different names and are placed under different sub folders (sub menus) [not thoroughly tested].
• But if the Destinations in the shortcuts to the same exe file have (different) options (e.g. C:\Temp\MyProgram.exe /MyOption) then they are all shown under "All Apps" [not thoroughly tested].

Note that I did these tests on a PC with Windows 10 anniversary upgrade. It may be different prior to the anniversary upgrade.