New Windows 11 Start Menu Annoyingly Hides Oft-Used Actions (pcworld.com) 97
An anonymous reader shares a report: A new test version of Windows 11 is available for Windows Insiders on the Dev Channel with Build 26120.961, which rolls out a significant change: a new Windows Start menu. You'll immediately notice that Microsoft has redesigned the Microsoft user account display, moving it to the center of the Start menu as soon as you click on the username or profile picture.
This new "account manager" feature gives you quicker access to your various Microsoft accounts, such as Microsoft 365, Xbox Game Pass, and OneDrive cloud storage. To no surprise, Microsoft is using this prominent display to remind you of their own products and services. The difference to the current Windows 11 Start menu is obvious, as the following screenshot shows:
This new "account manager" feature gives you quicker access to your various Microsoft accounts, such as Microsoft 365, Xbox Game Pass, and OneDrive cloud storage. To no surprise, Microsoft is using this prominent display to remind you of their own products and services. The difference to the current Windows 11 Start menu is obvious, as the following screenshot shows:
Features (Score:5, Insightful)
Features designed to serve the company, and not the user.
Re:Features (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, there are third-party programs that will give you a sane, usable Start Menu.
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Maybe now is the time I should investigate...
Re:Features (Score:5, Informative)
Or maybe Open Shell [github.io] is sufficient.
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openshell and 7+taskbar tweaker are what allow me to have a reasonable taskbar and start menu. It's more or less how it was in w2k.
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I've never tried it but I read it is possible to run a KDE desktop on Windows.
Maybe now is the time I should investigate...
It's not anymore and it's been that way for a long time, with the recent version of KDE/Plasma. You can run some individual apps however
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Re: Features (Score:3)
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The Windows Start menu has been completely broken and useless since Windows 8
I don't believe that one bit. The Windows 10 menu is the best by far, on any OS. The loss of it in favor of a fucking sea of icons is a big part of what has pushed many people off Windows entirely.
In 10, you have the all programs, plus a 'favorites' area that isn't just icons, but widgets that provide very useful info at a glance. Each widget can run in tiny (icon) mode, up to huge mode, each one providing a more elaborate UI. The Weather app is nicely tucked away there, not taking any space until you
Re:Features (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've never needed a second level of folders. I never even noticed you couldn't do that until now.
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Re:Features (Score:5, Informative)
The Windows 10 start menu isn't as good as the Vista/7 one. It's less customizable, stuff just gets dumped into one big list that's sorted (kind of) alphabetical. You can pin stuff as favorites, but it's horribly space inefficient. Most of those shortcuts are tiles, with few of them benefiting from actually being tiles. And your choice is either only a small number of pinned items, or making it huge to the point it is practically the start screen we got with Windows 8. Oh, and the search feature is nearly useless, though I suppose that's more of an implementation problem than a design problem.
I suppose in its defense, the right click menu with the start button is a nice addition. And I guess the shutdown functionality is better than the stupidity that was in Vista/7.
Of course, you've also got the non-Windows options. The XFCE "whisker menu", which actually has a lot in common with the Windows Vista/7 start menu, is also pretty good.
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The small tiles are the same size as icons. I don't know what spacing you're talking about, since they're very compact.
I never used second level subfolders, so much that I never noticed they were removed. I think most people just add stuff to "favorites" or type to search for less used apps, which is way faster anyway.
W10 also has "Recently Added," which I miss in KDE Linux. It's useful after you install something new and want to add to favorites.
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Try ExplorerPatcher. It can give you the Windows 10 start menu on 11, as well as some other nice tweaks.
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The Windows Start menu has been completely broken and useless since Windows 8
I don't believe that one bit. The Windows 10 menu is the best by far, on any OS. The loss of it in favor of a fucking sea of icons is a big part of what has pushed many people off Windows entirely.
In 10, you have the all programs, plus a 'favorites' area that isn't just icons, but widgets that provide very useful info at a glance. Each widget can run in tiny (icon) mode, up to huge mode, each one providing a more elaborate UI. The Weather app is nicely tucked away there, not taking any space until you clicked "Start." Just ideal IMO.
The utter fuster-cluck of the Win7 start menu was what finally forced me to start using desktop shortcuts and Steam shortcuts for everything. I used to pride myself on a clean desktop, I've long since given up on that.
Don't even get me started on the taskbar mess... "hey, lets hide all these different windows under the same shitty icon so if you're looking for something it takes ages to search through thumbnails" combined with "the mouse has come within 30 metres of the taskbar... heres a popup of a thum
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Windows 10 start menu is the best? The one that won't find a new program after installing it and instead takes you to a Bing search in your non-default browser?
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Don't know what you're talking about. I've never had the slightest issue.
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Honestly, they had it right with the original Win95/NT4 start menu. Just.... applications aranged into categories in a simple menu dive. Perfect. Every change since has been a degredation in UI/UX as far as I can see and I've met very few people who disagree. But this stuff? Microsoft have lost the plot.
Title vs. body (Score:4, Informative)
story title: "hides oft-used actions"
body: zero details, does not even mention what's in the title
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However, the redesign has a noticeable side effect: the âoeLock,â âoeSign out,â and âoeSwitch userâ options that used to be immediately available are no longer there in this newly designed menu.
Instead, as Windows Latest shows, you now have to click on the three dots at the top right of the new user account menu to reach the âoeSign outâ and âoeSwitch userâ options. Furthermore, the âoeLockâ option is gone.
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Re: Title vs. body (Score:2)
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I dont think I have ever used those options, even on my work drone pc it goes to the lock screen if I dont windows key + L when getting up
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story title: "hides oft-used actions"
body: zero details, does not even mention what's in the title
So, just another typical /. article.
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The body literally mentions the lock/log out/restart etc are moved into a button, and says they're more often used and have been hidden under an extra click.
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Slashdot is a site where your supposed to follow the link.
Follow he link. It tells you. No need to be lazy and just get angry at the summary.
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Actually TFA tells you exactly what the title is referring to:
Re:Title vs. body (Score:5, Insightful)
Going forward, an extra mouse click will be needed
This should surprise no one. Every time Microsoft "redesigns" their software they make it more difficult and add extra steps to do things, or just outright hide things in a multitude of sub-menus in an obscure location.
Their ultimate goal seems to be making it as difficult as possible to use the OS so you have to rely on them giving you answers since you have to "search" for everything rather than going straight to it. Instead of going to the dairy section of a grocery store to get eggs, they're making you wander around the entire store before asking someone who works there where to find the eggs.
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Going forward, an extra mouse click will be needed
This should surprise no one. Every time Microsoft "redesigns" their software they make it more difficult and add extra steps to do things, or just outright hide things in a multitude of sub-menus in an obscure location.
Their ultimate goal seems to be making it as difficult as possible to use the OS so you have to rely on them giving you answers since you have to "search" for everything rather than going straight to it. Instead of going to the dairy section of a grocery store to get eggs, they're making you wander around the entire store before asking someone who works there where to find the eggs.
This. So much this. Not being a big fan of Windows, I rely on muscle memory to administer systems I'm responsible for. But every time they bring out a new version, it all gets changed for absolutely no reason. So the easiest way to figure it out is search Windows 11 and the function I'm trying to work. Same thing happened going to W8 from W7, then W10 from W7.
I call it Whack a mole administration, because oyu never know where the setting you need will pop up.
Change just for change is pretty pointless
Re:Title vs. body (Score:5, Insightful)
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Search gives them another opportunity to offer superfluous crap to the user.
Yes, search for MMC and it shows up some Hyper V crap with no other suggestions. Search for MMC.exe and it magically finds it. Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick. What the hell is wrong with those folks? Their interface is intentionally engineered to lead you the wrong way when you follow your natural inclinations. It is obscene.
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Search gives them another opportunity to offer superfluous crap to the user.
The correct word here is "flog", it's there to flog crap to the end user.
Flog; as in to sell or offer to sell, particularly in an unwanted or dishonest manner.
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Their ultimate goal seems to be making it as difficult as possible to use the OS
I'm okay with this. I don't use an OS. I use the programs I installed on it. I find the Startmenu hate hilarious on account of the fact I haven't opened mine at all this year (except for that couple of hours where my work PC was reimaged and I had to reinstall a few applications).
Now if they fucked with the way to find my files, that would be a problem as that is virtually the only OS function anyone uses other than the button to connect to wifi.
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It already does this for me. maybe there's a setting for it? But start menu does not show "recently used items", instead it shows "pinned items". So one click to get to items that are ALREADY on the task bar and can be activated in one click, then two clicks for the recently used items, presumably the items I want the most. Start menu is not designed to be helpful.
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It is in the screenshot, as mentioned in the summary. Maybe you're still using the old slashdot interface that does not support screenshots and unicode? /s
XFCE (Score:5, Informative)
As far as usability goes, which Windows was meant to be really good at, XFCE and the whisker menu is top-notch, IMO.
If you disagree, don't bother telling me, get an issue logged.
If you agree with my comment in the sense that XFCE is top notch, and Windows isn't, also get an issue logged. Oh wait, that as I came to understand it, was just a place for the user to feel like they've been able to do something about the problems that MS choose to not do anything about.
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FVWM [fvwm.org]
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Same here. FVWM. No need for anything else.
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I posted on the forum instead of/in prelude to logging an issue.
When I pop up the menu with xfce4-popup-whiskermenu it doesn't get focus so I can't type into it.
I can probably fix it with compiz, and compiz might also be the problem.
The keyboard shortcut editor is pretty bad, too.
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I find it quite cool. Maybe it's the defaults in xubuntu, Debian seems to have more basic defaults, or maybe that was last stable.
Still light years ahead of windows.
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I'm using Devuan 5. But like I said I'm not using a straight XFCE desktop.
I'm using sddm, xcfe4, compiz, emerald, and xscreensaver, with X of course. Nvidia 4060, driver from the runfile installer. Custom EDID since the 4k TV I use as a monitor reports the wrong size and text becomes stupidly tiny. Kernel 6.7.12, pipewire with wireplumber instead of pulseaudio.
Choice is one of the best things about Linux. But it does sometimes get lumpy :)
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oops, I mean, xfce4. I also use spectacle for screenshots, I have KDE installed as I was using it for a while and still enjoy some of the apps, like kwrite.
The problem was compiz's focus stealing prevention. Adding !(title=Whisker Menu) to the list of focus-stealing prevention windows solved the problem.
I would like to use just meta alone to toggle the menu instead of meta+something though (I am using backtick.)
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You might be surprised but a lot of windows users still see that as the best version. Still.
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the problems that MS choose to not do anything about.
Maybe I want XFCE to work differently. Do you think if I log an issue they'll side with me and destroy it for you? Neither Microsoft nor the team who maintain XFCE are a democracy, and they certainly are not there to address the whims of singular users. If there is functionally something wrong with your GUI there is no "logging an issue", there is only finding a different GUI to suit your needs.
You're not entitled for any developer to accommodate you, not closed source, not open source.
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That's not entirely true.
When there's behaviour you want changed, you can log an issue, or send a patch. Often if the change can be implemented as an optional change/toggle, it can often be done.
The big difference is if you want something changed in MS products you have only the option of asking, if you want it changed in open source you can patch it or pay someone to patch it, or log an issue and send the patch that implements it an option/toggle. Changing defaults might well be met with some friction.
What
The enshittification of Windows continues (Score:5, Insightful)
News at 11.
Question for Windows users (Score:2)
Do you actually have to access your "various Microsoft accounts" frequently? Meaning - from the end-user point of view, is there a legitimate argument for making a change like this?
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Do you actually have to access your "various Microsoft accounts" frequently? Meaning - from the end-user point of view, is there a legitimate argument for making a change like this?
Well, the obvious answer is "Microsoft wants to 'advertise' its ecosystem", which is the greater goal here.
However, it really depends on what options are actually available. By way of example, it's entirely possible to have an MS account tied to the PC's login, which is different from the MS account tied to an MS Office license, which is different from one's Xbox gamer tag. If it's possible to ensure that the right account is tied to the right thing, or delegate services from one account to another (e.g. se
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I have a work account tied to an Office license. That's the only one I use frequently. All the others I only use when I have to login to do something. For example, when Microsoft had a nice forum for Asp.net, I would login to to post a question. They screwed that up so much that I now use Reddit or Stackoverflow.
I now have email through Zoho, Gmail, and Outlook that I use through a web browser. Of those three, Outlook on Edge is the only one that routinely stops downloading emails if I just leave it open al
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About as much as I would say I used "Lock,” “Sign out,” and “Switch user” in the past 10+ years. We always talk about how Microsoft has telemetry but one use for that is they probably know what people click on most often, a presumption this article makes about those functions they don't really back up. Vast majority of devices sold are personal devices and even majority of desktops I imagine are single user.
I want the Windows XP Start menu (Score:4)
I sure miss having nothing but a drop-down-style hierarchal menu for the start menu. Having a nested tree of my own liking with the stuff where I wanted it was so much faster and convenient. Ever since they started screwing around with that things have just gotten worse and worse. The worst change was forcing you to scroll through it like a window pane and clicking through each branch to see what's under it. At least, it was the worst change until they figured out how to make even that look desirable and gave us the ludicrous crap we have now. Finding new ways to go beyond even that is just insane.
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The scrolling sucks. Having every installed application visible at once was great when you needed to scan the list quickly for something.
The "News and Interests" shit in the system tray is the worst. Even after you specifically turn it off, you'll get obtrusive pop-ups, randomly on top of whatever you're trying to do, asking if you want to enable News and Interests. I counted 3. So I guess even when you are given a choice whether you want their ads, you have to tell them "no" 4 times until they listen. Not
Re: I want the Windows XP Start menu (Score:3)
Curiously, I have noticed that I've subconsciously trained myself to automatically say "no" to every thing MS asks me. I wonder if that's something MS has wanted to train users all along.
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Since when can you say "no" to anything? It's "maybe later" or "not right now". Fuckers.
You have plenty of options. (Score:3)
You're not alone and a variety of utilities and hacks exist to help:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windo... [reddit.com]
https://www.startallback.com/ [startallback.com]
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I use OpenShell and 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to make my Windows 10 start menu resemble the one in Windows 7, which isn't too different from the one in XP. And I have my All Programs tree setup with KDE4 style program groupings, just the way I like it.
I also use these programs under Windows 11, but I find that Microsoft like to update Windows Explorer in a way that breaks them. It has happened often enough that I suspect that Microsoft is doing it on purpose. Which is why that Windows 11 laptop will eventually
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I sure miss having nothing but a drop-down-style hierarchal menu for the start menu. Having a nested tree of my own liking with the stuff where I wanted it was so much faster and convenient.
Oh fuck no. That was the worst. Having to manage and sort my own GUI, or worse, use someone else's was a right royal pain the arse. The single best thing Microsoft ever did was incorporate a search in to the start menu. That was about the last time I ever clicked through to applications or scrolled or screwed around with a list somewhere.
I can type startbutton > O > u > t > enter much faster than I can even get my hand on the mouse to start screwing around and looking for where I filed Outlook i
I call BS (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not really possible to make it worse.
I use Windows as little as possible, but I just booted into the current Windows 11 install on my laptop.
The start menu *already* has almost no oft-used actions. I count 25 buttons, only three of which I would ever use (Mail, Settings and Power Off). The rest are mostly shovelware like TikTok, ESPN, Spotify, and the trial versions of subscription Office apps which long ago expired.
(Sure, I could probably swap out some icons for actually useful programs, but why should I be the one doing the work? I might as well install a superior 3rd party start menu widget at that point.)
I never really noticed these buttons because the only useful way to use the start menu is to start typing the name of the program you want in the search bar. For me, I usually "UPD" to check for updates, so I can clear the 90-minute-long update procedure that probably got scheduled since the last time I booted into Windows. (Usually I have to do this about three times before it actually installs all of the pending updates. I can't believe that they have the gall to charge people money for this OS.)
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>I never really noticed these buttons because the only useful way to use the start menu is to start typing the name of the program you want in the search bar.
Except of course the search is unreliable and sometimes hangs or doesn't recognize things it should.
I miss the old method of a static menu tree with clickable shortcuts.
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doesn't recognize things it should.
Like Control Panel? You literally have to type the full "Control Panel" before it will show up in the results. Fuckers.
Screenshot? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Retarded Windows shit over and over (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just more of the usual retarded Windows shit that we see over and over. I honestly can't imagine how some of these design decisions ever make it into the actual OS.
Does NO ONE along the way through the entire chain of command ever stop and think, "Maybe this isn't good, maybe we shouldn't this"? Did they really have user test groups that told them this is what they wanted? I doubt it.
Instead it's more like, "What minor things can we fuck up to make it more annoying this time? How can we most effectively wreck their workflow? What pointless but disorienting changes can we make?"
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The problem is that we haven't hit "Windows 12!!!!" yet.
Windows 10 was supposed to be the "last Windows", just updated to keep it current. Then they decided they had enough changes to require new hardware, so Windows 11 was born. Win10 didn't require the new hardware, so it was put on the death schedule.
Win11 is just waiting for the next incompatible bit of hardware to be put out to, to force us to go to Win12.
Guess what? You don't have to install new hardware just because it came out. You don't have to "up
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I run Mint at home so I just laugh and shake my head when I see this kind of deliberate crippling of an OS.
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They all just look at the revenue. And that revenue says they are doing everything right. Even when they clearly do not.
Do what you want to the start menu (Score:5, Insightful)
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Open-Shell (Formerly Classic-Start) is what you need. https://github.com/Open-Shell/... [github.com]
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That's not how I manage it. but if I did, I'd have name the desktop folder "Program Manager".
Windows XP (Score:1)
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7 was genuinely better than XP in some important areas. A/V handling, permissions, memory management, and more.
It was also worse in some ways. Telemetry began to be a thing, although the spyware in 7 is much milder than what they push in 10 and 11.
lol yeah (Score:1)
does anyone even still use the menu like an old? just click it and start typing what you want, like MacOS spotlight. in fact exactly like that, just not quite as good.
if ads in your OS bother you, use a non-ubuntu linux.
jesus christ who gives a shit.
Re: lol yeah (Score:2)
and also do not ever use the gnu utility `parallel` as that is adware asking you to support FSF by citation and/or funding.
Windows users like this treatment (Score:2)
They always come back for more. If they didn't, they might actually look into other platforms. It's never been easier.
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Yep. Clearly some sub/dom pattern at work.
Writing this from Fedora KDE (Score:2)
Come on over, water's fine, and no fear of enshittification.
Productivity increase (Score:1, Funny)
The Windows 11 Start Menu and Task Bar changes have accelerated my productivity. They made me switch to Linux full-time.
"Redesign" = redundant UX designers (Score:3)
Whenever I see any software getting a "redesign", it tells me that company has not enough new products and too many UX designers. Left with nothing to do, the UX designers need to justify their existence and start redesigning existing products, often for the worse.
And the enshittification continues (Score:2)
Goot old MicroShit, always greedy, always incompetent.
So the drama is... (Score:2)
..they moved some options that almost nobody users somewhere else?
Some folks just don't react well to change. These people are holding the species back. We should encourage them to take up skydiving and bear-wrestling.
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Windows 10 (Score:1)
Microsoft is giving Windows 10 users every reason to skip 11 entirely. I've gotten used to my customized Windows 10 menu, with many pinned programs as small tiles/icons, grouped into categories. I see every change they introduced in Windows 11 as a bug. Start button in the middle of the taskbar, forcing you to look for it instead of relying on muscle memory? Skip. Start menu cluttered with their own junk? Skip. Explorer right click menu with missing options and the old right click menu as a fallback? Skip.
useless and annoying (Score:3)
All the Windows desktops I install (mostly at work) are installed with "oobe/bypassnro" so they don't have any Microsoft account inside, this feature is not only useless but annoying.
Ummm.... (Score:2)
Microsoft is a so-called gatekeeper according to the EU. I wonder how well them only advertising only their own products in Windows would go over with the EU?
On the other hand, this is a most wonderful footgun of Microsoft which will undoubtedly send more users scrambling for MacOS or Linux.
Anyway, I'm a happy Linux user who hasn't got to deal with this crap.
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According to the latest StatCounter web browsing numbers, there was a small increase in Linux users again in June 2024 - now 4.04%. The footgun is working slowly, but it is coming.
Step 1... (Score:2)
... remove all the product managers.
So how long can we stick with Win 10 (Score:2)
and what will it cost us for extended 'support' from Microsloth
Built-in alternative option... (Score:2)
I haven't looked at this new build yet... but in the current production version of Windows 11, there's a built-in alternative menu option that is largely targeted at power users: If you right-click on the Start menu button instead of left-clicking it, you get a more utilitarian menu that offers quick access to a whole raft of administrative features -- but which also just happens to have quicker access to the Sign-out/Shutdown/Restart options. This menu is almost entirely identical to the corresponding feat
Promoting Bing? (Score:2)
They're probably trying to improve Bing's numbers because unless you turn it off... and it's not exactly the easiest thing to do... your search for a function will hit Bing.
Disable Bing in Win11 start menu [howtogeek.com]