How to enable auto login in Windows 10

I had enabled BitLocker on my Windows 10 instance which I find so much better than Apple's FileVault implementation - I find the login process to be slower than that compared to Windows. You can read more on how to enable BitLocker on your Windows machine (via HowToGeek)

You probably have browsed previous posts around this topic detailing how to enable automatic login with netplwiz based on the screenshot below. If, for some reason the checkbox isn't available to you to uncheck then read on.

I'm currently on the latest Insider Preview of Windows 10 (19640 at the time of writing) and when accessing netplwiz I can't see any way to enable automatic login.

This is where Linux and MacOS excel - it's surprising there isn't an auto login option on the Accounts section in Settings.

Auto Login through the Registry

The only other option I found was to enable auto login via the Windows Registry, although not ideal it's an easy and straightforward method to set up auto login.

Follow the steps below to get started

1. Open the Registry Editor by entering registry in the start menu
2. In the address bar at the top of the registry window enter the path
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
   If you can't enter the path then you can navigate via the tree menu on the left.
3. Look for a value called DefaultUserName - if it doesn't exist then create a string value and enter your Windows username in to this key.
4. Do the same but this time for DefaultPassword by entering your Windows password
5. To finalise the process, create another string value with the name AutoAdminLogon with the value 1 - this will tell windows to enable auto login for yourself.