The invention provides an application program managing method and a terminal device. The application program managing method includes the following steps that when the event that any application program in the terminal device is installed, or uninstalled or started is detected, application program trace data are updated according to the detected event and include application trace items of all the installed application programs, and each application tracing item includes application program identification and the number of times of use; every other preset first updating period, the application program trace items in the application program trace data are sorted according to the number of times of use, the application program trace items with the largest number of times of use are selected, wherein the number of the application program trace items is a first preset number, and the application programs indicated by the selected application program trace items are updated to be items in a specific menu in a user interface. The steps are executed by using background programs.