A method for preloading an application, a terminal device, and a medium are provided. The method for preloading an application includes the following. An application predictive model is obtained by training a simple recurrent unit (SRU) neural network model according to multiple groups of usage timing association records. Usage status information of applications of a terminal of at least two past time points of a next time point is acquired. Probability values of launching the applications are acquired from the application predictive model by processing the usage status information of the applications with the application predictive model. An application to-be-launched at the next time point is determined according to the probability values and the application to-be-launched is preloaded.