How to autostart applications on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux

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The purpose of this tutorial is to show how to configure one or more applications to start up automatically upon system boot in Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish, specifically on the GNOME desktop environment. Follow our step by step instructions below as we set an application to autostart.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to install gnome-startup-applications package
  • How to automatically start application after user login in Ubuntu 22.04
How to autostart applications on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux Desktop
How to autostart applications on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux Desktop
Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions
Category Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish
Software GNOME desktop environment
Other Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

How to autostart applications on Ubuntu 22.04 step by step instructions

  1. The first step is to open a command line terminal and install the gnome-startup-applications, in case your Ubuntu 22.04 system does not already have it. Execute the following commands in terminal: 
    $ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install gnome-startup-applications
  2. Next, open up the Activities menu from the upper left corner of your screen and search for the startup keyword.
    Click on the Startup Applications Preferences to begin the autostart applications configuration
    Click on the Startup Applications Preferences to begin the autostart applications configuration
  3. Hit the Add button to add a new application to the autostart list.
    Adding a new application to autostart list
    Adding a new application to autostart list
  4. In this step you will need to enter the full path to the application’s binary executable of the application you wish to automatically start after user login. You may use the which Linux command to locate the full path of the application. For example we can locate the full path of the Firefox browser or Gnome terminal by executing: 
    $ which firefox
/usr/bin/firefox

$ which gnome-terminal
/usr/bin/gnome-terminal
  5. Now that we know the path to the executable, Enter any Name and Comment. Include the full path to the application within the Command field and hit Add when you are done.
    Finish adding the application by filling out name, comment, and command fields
    Finish adding the application by filling out name, comment, and command fields

From now on every time you log in into your Ubuntu system the selected application will start automatically.

Closing Thoughts


In this tutorial, we saw how to configure an application to start automatically upon system boot on the GNOME desktop environment in Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux. If you need to remove the configuration down the road, simply open the startup applications menu again and delete the desired application from the list.

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