[ad_1]
Of all the changes coming to Windows 11, the biggest and most visible may be the revamped Start Menu. With a new home on the taskbar and a redesigned layout of apps and functions, Windows 11 has reinvented and perhaps improved upon this essential piece of the Microsoft experience.
The Start menu is like your PC’s main control panel. It’s where you go to find apps you may not already have on your desktop or pinned to your taskbar, and it’s where you’ll find quick access to the settings menu and power controls.
Individual Start Menu items may not be as advanced or detailed as you might want in a specific situation, but it’s a good place to start and provides a quick portal to the tools you need at any given time.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
In Windows 11, Microsoft is making some big changes to the Start menu. The layout has changed and the included features have been simplified for a cleaner, hopefully more intuitive user experience.
There are still a lot of things we don’t know about the new Start Menu. But by looking at the videos and images from this week’s Microsoft Windows 11 event, we can gather some interesting details about what’s new, what’s different, and what’s staying the same on the Start Menu.
(Image credit: Microsoft) Wait, where is my Start button?
In Windows 11, the default home of the Start button is in a different location than in previous versions of Windows. Instead of having a static position in the lower left corner of the screen, the Start button and menu will have a more central position, in the middle of the taskbar that runs along the bottom of the screen.
If you prefer the left-oriented layout, it looks like you’ll be able to move the Start button back to that position. And, as always, you can open this menu with a tap of the Windows key.
The new Start menu looks a lot cleaner than before, and moving it from the corner to the center of the screen could offer some interesting improvements on how efficiently you can navigate between the apps and files that are there.
But with the change comes a bit of confusion, and until we can actually use a final version of the new Windows 11, our best information on the new Start Menu may be the ad images itself.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Search bar
At the top of the Start menu is a search bar. The feature for this should be pretty self-explanatory, allowing you to enter some text to search through all the apps and files on your computer, as well as fetch information from the web and relevant results from the Windows Store.
Judging by the details shown in Microsoft’s preview video, it looks like search results start populating as soon as you start typing, with a search results interface that lets you quickly sort across apps, documents, web results, and more. positive results.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Blocked apps
The next item down is a collection of icons for all blocked apps. The fact that this specifies blocked apps should mean we’re looking at a list of frequently used apps curated by the user, not automatically generated by the system.
This change gives you plenty of menu space for the specific apps you want to have there, allowing you to customize the start menu to be perfect for you and your needs.
At the top of this locked app menu, we see a button for All apps. Previous versions of the start menu had a long scrolling list of all the apps and programs installed on the machine, and this could be how a similar menu is accessed in Windows 11.
Interestingly, there are three dots next to the pinned app icon panel. The location and design of this hitherto unidentified element suggests that it will allow you to have multiple sets of apps locked, swiping between them with one click.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Recommended
The next big section of the Start menu is labeled Recommended. It appears to consist of auto-generated recommendations for the apps and files you are most likely to need.
The specifics on how these items are selected have not been shared with the public, so they could be based on anything from frequently used apps to files that are regularly opened at the same time of day.
User account
At the bottom of the Start menu is a profile picture, which identifies the active user account. Clicking this will likely give you the option to log out, switch users, or lock your system.
Power
And in the lower right corner of the Start menu there is a power icon. If it’s anything like Windows 10, clicking on this icon will bring up options to shut down or restart the machine or just put it into sleep mode.
Goodbye, Live Tiles
When Microsoft launched Windows 8 in 2012, it added Live Tiles, which replaced static app icons with a dynamic square grid menu that could show real-time icons, photos, or information within a given app. Live Tiles remained active for Windows 10, with some changes to make them more usable.
But it appears that this real-time feature has been removed from the Start menu and renamed Widget, with icons returning to the Start menu. And while Live Tiles could be visually interesting, the busy interface they created wasn’t always easy to navigate. The automatic organization of the tiles could be confusing and the dynamic aspects of the tiles created a visually very cluttered menu.
According to the specs listed for Windows 11, the Start Menu is also losing the ability to create named app groups and folders. The added apps and sites won’t migrate from Windows 10 during the update, so be prepared to repeat some of the customizations.
It is also interesting to note that the new Start menu is not resizable, a feature that has been offered since the advent of Windows 8. This may change in the future. I might see the size of the menus and icons as important accessibility features being added along the way but for now it’s one size fits all.
Today’s best Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 deals
[ad_2]
picture credit