Windows 11 feature focus: Get started

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Like the rest of the Windows 11 user experience, the Start menu has been simplified to be modern and familiar. Whether you consider this development to be successful will depend, in part, on your needs and expectations, as some features have been removed from the Windows 10 Start menu or require additional steps to access them.

As you probably know, the Start Menu made its debut in Windows 95, and interestingly enough, one of the core concepts of that original design – document focus – returns in Windows 11, more than 25 years later. This in addition to providing the capabilities to launch the application, the Windows 11 Start menu also displays the most recently used documents and other files.

You can access Start as you did in previous versions of Windows: by selecting the Start button on the taskbar, clicking the Windows key on your keyboard, or typing Ctrl + Esc. When you do this, the reimagined Start menu rises from the center of the screen and, at first, is visually separated from the taskbar and presented as a floating window. Like other UI elements in Windows 11, Start features rounded window corners and seamlessly adopts any theme you choose.

There are several interfaces in the new Start menu:

research. A browser-like search box appears at the top of Start so that search results appear below your search, just like in web-based search engines. As with the Start Search functionality in Windows 10, Search in Windows 11 helps you find and run installed apps, documents, other files, settings, and other content, which is for your sign-in account (a directory-based Microsoft account or Azure Active account for work or school) Provides results from OneDrive, SharePoint, Outlook, and Bing on the web.

installed. As with the pinned area of ​​the Start menu in Windows 10, this area displays icons for apps that you, Microsoft, or your PC maker have installed on Start. Unlike its Windows 10 cousin, Windows 11 does not provide live tiles, but instead uses more traditional icons. You can of course customize the installed apps that appear here and drag and drop the pinned icons to place them. If there are more than three rows of icons in Installed, you can scroll from within this area to see the installed overflow icons.

All applications. To access the full list of installed apps, select the All apps button. All apps take over the Start Menu screen and look and work like the All Apps list in the Windows 10 Start Menu.

recommended. This confusingly loaded area provides access to two different content items: recent documents and other files, and recently installed applications. If you want to remove an item from this area, right-click on it and choose “Remove from list” from the context menu that appears.

more. To access a longer list of recently installed documents, files, and apps, select the More button. Recommended takes over the Start menu screen and provides a much longer menu of that content. (As with the recommended main view, you can also control items from this view.)

the account. In the lower left corner of Start, you will find an image representing your user account. (You can change or edit this image by opening Settings (Winkey + i) and going to Accounts > Your Information.) When you select this image, a small popup appears with options to change account settings, lock the computer, sign out of this account, or switch to Any other accounts configured for use on this computer, if available.

Energy. In the lower right corner of the Start screen, you’ll find a power icon that displays options like Sleep, Shut down, and Restart when selected.

You can also right-click the Start button on the taskbar to display the Quick Access menu—which some mistakenly call the “Power User Menu”—as was the case with Windows 10. This menu, like Start, is simplified to Slightly compared to a previous menu, but it still works in the same way by providing access to old management interfaces like Device Manager and Computer Management as well as tools like Task Manager, Settings, File Explorer, Search and Run, etc. You can also display the quick access menu by typing Winkey + x. (Note that the System item will be added to this menu before Windows 11 is released.)

Compared to Windows 10, Start menu customization has also been simplified, but you can see the remaining options by going to Settings > Personalization > Start as before. Here you can toggle the display of recently added and most used apps in Recommended, as well as displaying recently opened items in the Start menu, Jump Lists, and File Explorer (in its own Quick Access view).

You can also enable the display of a wide range of folder icons — for things like File Explorer, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, etc. — in the Start menu. None of the items are enabled by default, but if you enable one or more here, they will appear at the bottom of Start, to the left of the power button.

The new streamlined Start menu leaves behind some key features from Windows 10’s Start. There are no more live tiles, as mentioned, and there is no way to create and manage groups and folders in Pinned. You can no longer view Start as a full screen experience. You cannot view more items in Pinned, which will expand the size of that area.

Perhaps most problematic, there is no way to configure how to determine the installed and recommended size in relation to each other. If you remove enough tokens from Pinned, for example, that there are fewer than 12 – in two rows of six symbols each – Pinned shows an empty row instead of making extra space for Recommended.

Hopefully this will be fixed before Microsoft ships Windows 11 in October 2021.

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