Disclosed are an application start method and an electronic device. The method includes: obtaining, by a SystemServer process in an electronic device, a start message of a first application; sending, by the SystemServer process, a creation request for an application process to a daemon process in response to the start message, where the creation request includes application information of the first application; creating, by the daemon process, the application process for the first application in response to the creation request, where the application process includes a first thread and a second thread; executing, by the application process, the first thread and the second thread in parallel, where the first thread executes initialization of a main thread of the first application, and the second thread creates a first class loader according to the application information to load a class file of the first application.