Some time after building my emulation PC I noticed the “Most used” list in the Start Menu only ever displayed the default MS apps, even after a clean install of Win10. The most common programs launched on that PC are RetroArch, Launchbox and Steam yet none of them appeared in the list.
Searching on Google mostly yielded results of people complaining about it but no real solutions. Eventually I found a solution at the bottom of this thread – basically boils down to making another language the default in Windows and then switching back to your original language setting. Somehow this resets the list and allows it to update correctly.
- Go to Start Menu > Settings > Time & Language > Region & Language
- Click on Add a language > search and add another language (preferably one you can actually read…) installing the default options.
- Make the new language your default and reboot.
- After rebooting, go back to Start Menu > Settings > Time & Language as before and change your default language back to the original and remove the language you added in step 2.
After performing these steps, the “Most used” list should be populated with new apps after a few launches. I originally did this fix on Windows 10 1803 and my “Most used” list still accurately reflects app usage even after upgrading to 1809. Hopefully this bug doesn’t exist anymore but it’s worth giving the above steps a try if you stumble on this post while using a future build of Win10.