As far as I know, Startup Applications have been a part of Ubuntu for more than a decade. Its removal seems like a bad choice as a user might want to auto start something else than a GUI app. Or start it with specific flags.
What were the reasons for its removal? Not wanting to duplicate the functionality found in GNOME settings?
It was a change in GNOME (fully switching to systemd user sessions) that made the old startup applications tool incompatible…
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/09/ubuntu-25-10-drops-startup-applications-app
That’s very unfortunate. Especially considering how fragmented software distribution on Linux is, this will cause problems when a user searches up how to auto start an AppImage or something and an article tells them they need to download a separate app to do this or type commands into the terminal.
Why do you think that ?
An app, no matter how it was delivered to your system (snap, flatpak, appimage, built from source …) will show up in system settings as long as it has a proper .desktop file …
In system settings you will be able to simply switch a toggle to have it autostart …
The only thing we are actually losing thanks to this change is the graphical ability of having a completely custom script run on startup, for that you need to create a systemd unit in ~/.config/systemd/user/ that calls this script …
Given that it should be a rather simple programming task to create some kind of third party GUI for this, I really expect someone from the community to create something like that in the long term that you can eventually install …
Come to think of it now, this change will encourage users to properly integrate all software into their system which is a good thing.
During my first years with Linux I didn’t realize you can even integrate an AppImage and kept launching them from the file manager.
I really expect someone from the community to create something like that
You’re right, I found an app that does this called Ignition .
Careful, I don’t think ignition is what you think 
$ apt show ignition
[...]
Description: First boot installer and configuration tool
Ignition is the utility invented for Fedora CoreOS and RHEL CoreOS to
manipulate disks during the initramfs stage. This includes partitioning disks,
formatting partitions, writing files (regular files, systemd units, etc.),
and configuring users. On first boot, Ignition reads its configuration
from a source of truth (remote URL, network metadata service, hypervisor
bridge, etc.) and applies the configuration.
.
Ignition is primarily intended to be used in an initramfs built using
dracut.
(This is more like a system installer to be run from your initrd)
I should’ve specified, Ignition from Flathub
https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.flattool.Ignition
There sadly doesn’t seem to be a different version but I usually have flatpak enabled anyways.
The issue here is that the new method does not allow for autostarting apps that require additional options to be specified at start-up. If an app you autostart requires specific options, you’ll need to write a shell script to start the app the way you need it, then create a .desktop file for that shell script. The older way was a whole lot easier.
It’s always been true that if you place a copy of the .desktop file of an application into ~/.config/autostart, then it will start on login. Even a script can have a .desktop file there.
You will have to create the folder should it not exist.
Cool, thanks! I was not aware of this. I’ve been using Ubuntu since Precise, but still consider myself a novice. Good to learn something new every day.
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