Windows 11: The start menu finally seems on the right track with these changes

While Windows 10 will bow out in a few months, and no Windows 12 is currently on the horizon, Microsoft must put double bites to convince users to kiss Windows 11. This requires regular operating system improvements and the addition of new features. Today, the firm focuses on one of the most dedicated elements of its bone: its start menu.

Via the build 26200.5641 (KB5060824) for Windows Insiders testers, before a possible global deployment to all, Microsoft makes many modifications to this central section at Windows 11.

Now with an elevator to display more elements, this new start menu certainly takes up, from top to bottom, the sections of pinned applications and recommendations currently offered in the current version of the menu. But the new version finally brings together, below the home page, all applications within a dedicated section.

By default, in this “All” section, the programs are now ranked by categories automatically created from three applications of an identical type. The applications most used by categories are displayed in priority in each box. An alphabetical display is also accessible. In one case as in the other, this allows you to access its applications more easily and quickly, without going through a secondary window.

In addition, this new start menu is now wider and automatically adapts to the screen size. For example, a wide screen will display eight pinned applications columns, six recommendations and four categories columns, when a smaller device is limited to six, four and three. The size of these sections will also adapt to their content: not many pinned applications? The section will take up less space to let others take their ease. However, an adjustment makes it possible to fix the sizes of the sections if necessary.

Recommendations, which are often criticized so far, can now be deactivated from the parameters. What, there too, give way to other sections. Checks also make it possible to choose more finely to display or not the recently installed or the most used applications, as well as the visited websites, advice or recommended files. Finally, a new button to the right of the search bar allows you to activate or not a click the menu dedicated to the connected smartphone. This menu should arrive later in 2025 in Europe.