Question How to restore all missing application icons in the start menu?

Minaz

Commendable
Sep 20, 2021
118
4
1,585
From time to time, Windows 10 does this annoying thing where it will remove icons from the start menu. I use the full start menu (not the new "slim" version), and I actually depend on the icons to keep track of what I have and my workflow. For instance, I group together a bunch of icons from related apps for say "technical analysis" (or whatever). The apps are arranged in order in a group and seeing them there reminds me of what I need to do.
If an icon goes missing, I have to add the icon back, which is easy enough to do (I simply search for the app, right click, and select "add to start").
The problem is, I have a lot of apps and therefore a lot of icons, and some apps I don't use unless I need them. So after a while, I might open a group and find some apps missing their icons but I have no idea which app it is, and it would take me a very long time to track down each missing icon/app. (Incidentally, often the only reason I know an app is missing in the first place is because there is a gap in the icon grid where the missing app icon used to be).
This happens most often when Windows updates, sometimes it is because it removes incompatible older apps (and this is a legitimate reason but EVEN SO I WISH THEY WOULD TELL ME THEY DID THIS BEFORE DOING IT!), sometimes its the app that does it because they did an automatic update, but sometimes the icons disappear for no reason at all that I know of.
I am wondering is there a method/tool that would allow me to find all apps that have the ability to be added to the start menu, that isn't currently on the start menu? This would be a tremendous help to me!

An example of what happened from just today:

I happened to be rearranging my Windows 10 groups when I opened a group I seldom ever use, the data recovery software group. I noticed there was a gap in the icon grid. I had 5 data recovery tool icons, now I had 4, and the only reason I knew this was because the missing icon was not the last one (hence the gap). I do not often use data recovery, so it took me quite a while to figure out which data recovery app was missing the icon, but once I found out, it was a simple matter to add the icon back. If I had a tool that could tell me all the apps that were missing icons in the start menu, it would have saved me a lot of time. BTW there quite a few missing icons that I have never found.