How to Run High Priority Apps on Windows

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Written by Bardimin

On April 5, 2022
Home » Blogs » Windows » Tips and Tricks » How to Run High Priority Apps on Windows

Do you feel applications that run slowly on Windows? You can fix this problem by running the at a higher priority. With a higher priority, the will run faster.

is a operating system that has several ways to manage running processes to help make your computer run more smoothly. In addition to Affinity which controls how many processors cores an application can run, there is also a priority on which a process runs. Priority will queue an application when requesting processing time.

Like when you are doing video editing work which is a huge CPU resource and at the same time you are opening a . If you change the priority of the video editing app to be higher than the , the video editing app will get all the CPU resources and the browser app will get the rest.

Set Priority Via Task Manager

You can change the priority of the application through the . In 11 you can do this with the shortcut ( Ctrl + Shift + Esc ). Then select the “ Details ” tab and then select the application that you want to set the priority for. Right-click the application and then select “ Set priority > High ”.

set priority task manager

Priority options available:

  • LOW: Start the application with the lowest priority class.
  • BELOW NORMAL: Starting the application priority class is lower than usual.
  • NORMAL: Starting the application in the NORMAL priority class.
  • ABOVENORMAL: Starting the application priority class is higher than normal.
  • HIGH: Start the application with a high-priority class.
  • REALTIME: Starting the app in real-time priority class.

Run apps with priority via CMD

To give the application a high priority you can do it by starting the application via CMD. Open CMD then type the following command

start "title" /high PATH

for example, you will run Firefox with high priority

start "" /high "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"

Set app priority permanently

All of the above methods will only change the priority temporarily, if you restart your PC/Laptop, all priority will return to normal. To change permanently you can do it via application shortcuts.

Right-click the shortcut and select “ Properties ”. Then in the ” Target ” add at the beginning of the following code:

% windir %\system32\cmd.exe /c start "" /high

Or in full it becomes (for example changing to high priority)

% windir %\system32\cmd.exe /c start "" /high "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"

Then save the changes and run the application via the shortcut. Then check through the Task Manager whether the priority has changed.

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