Prevent applications from adding to start screen on install

No you cannot as it is the program itself who determines what gets installed in the "start menu". Just as on previous versions of windows, you have no influence over this as it is all legacy code.

I do have a suggestion however but it is not perfect.

go to your start menu folder: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu and change the permissions of it so that the system can no longer write to the folder. That way nothing will get added. Have not tried this but should work. The negative point is that NO icons will be added, so not even the one for your app.

If this is not a solution, you can always just manage your start screen in that same folder.

This is likely due to legacy installers that are not aware of how to "feature" only application icons onto the new Start Screen, and it's likely new applications will make better use of this feature in future.

There is no way to selectively stop icons being created (except for possibly stopping all of them), however you can remove icons from the main screen by right-clicking them and clicking the Unpin from Start button at the bottom.

They'll still be available in the All Apps screen or when searching, much like they were nestled away in folders in the old Start Menu.