A program runs in the background because that's how the developers
designed it. The designers of the program in question can tell you if
they built that into the code, possibly by a command line option. If
they didn't, you can't force it to run in the background.

'Low priority' doesn't necessarily mean 'in the background'. Priority
has to do with what priority a program gets to access the CPU's resources.

---
Leonard Grey
Errare humanum est

Michael Moser wrote:
I would like to start a specific program from a desktop .lnk-file (aka
"shortcut") but with low priority (so it runs essentially in the
background).
Can I do that and what are the necessary options?

I tried to change the "target" in the links property to read
start "title" /LOW "path to .exe" but that only yields me a "the
name 'start' specified in the target box is not valid. Make sure bla
bla...".

Is there really no more elegant way than to move the command line into a
.cmd/.bat file and then use that as link target?

Michael