How to restore start menu link to conda env?

Product Help Anaconda & Miniconda
1

After running conda update conda and conda update --all yesterday, I noticed that the anaconda prompt shortcut no longer exists in my start menu (on windows).

The prompt also got removed from Windows Terminal profiles (perhaps Terminal scrapes start menu to find the links).

I can still start the env with %userprofile%\miniconda3\condabin\activate.bat , and could manually add this as a profile to Terminal again, but would like to know

  1. why the link was removed
  2. if there’s a way to re-install it again so things keep working automagically (is there some package to install?).
2

The start menu entries can be restored by installing the following packages:

  • anaconda_prompt
  • anaconda_powershell_prompt

Since both your terminal profiles and start menu entries are gone, it looks like they were uninstalled. To reproduce this, can you tell me what version of Anaconda Distribution or Miniconda you had installed? Do you remember what version of conda you updated from?

(perhaps Terminal scrapes start menu to find the links).

The Windows Terminal does not scrape the start menu, but uses its own configuration file (you can even write your own profiles): Windows Terminal installation | Microsoft Learn

3

Thanks!

fwiw, conda install anaconda_prompt anaconda_powershell_prompt did not work at first. I had to remove and then (re)install the packages to make the start menu items appear. This appears to be because the packages were still installed, their outputs just got removed from start menu for some reason.

when I did the first install, I was presented with:

  added / updated specs:
    - anaconda_powershell_prompt
    - anaconda_prompt


The following packages will be UPDATED:

  ca-certificates                       2025.7.9-h4c7d964_0 --> 2025.7.14-h4c7d964_0
  certifi                             2025.7.9-pyhd8ed1ab_0 --> 2025.7.14-pyhd8ed1ab_0

(in case that hints at anything)

Also, the profiles do automatically appear in Terminal after those conda packages were reinstalled.

I had updated windows (to 10.0.26100.4652 ) as well as conda, so not sure what the culprit was (I also noticed that those packages were updated within the problematic timeframe, too History for recipe - AnacondaRecipes/anaconda_prompt-feedstock · GitHub ) :man_shrugging:

4

Thank you! I think I understand what may have caused the original failure: it is the simultaneous update of anaconda_prompt and menuinst. menuinst creates the start menu entries and terminal profiles. The recent update along with updating packages that creates shortcuts causes a non-fatal failure (conda install does not stop when menuinst fails).

So, the package is installed, but the start menu entries are not created. I am thinking through a possible fix.

5

Thank you again for the report! This should be fixed now with menuinst 2.3.1.

For those interested in the details, this is the issue that caused the bug: `menuinst` fails during `conda update` due to missing `menuinst.default.json` file · Issue #358 · conda/menuinst · GitHub