Windows 11 Start Menu Sucks

AddRAM said:

Windows 11 wasn`t built in a day

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Yeah it was probably built in 17 minutes.

Windows 11 will give them plenty of things to improve on in Windows 12.
It seems as if that is the way things work in Microsoft Land.
Just look at the history of their operating system releases. It's history repeating.

Two main things that need to be configured - remove the search bar and remove the Recommended section. That is clearly impossible. Grouping or organizing icons in any sensible way is not possible either, although I did notice two nested folders in a screen shot from one of the posts in this thread - I'm going to see if that's possible, this did not work in Windows 10 and was annoying as hell.

Sure, one can live with it or come up with workarounds or install third-party software. Question is, why? The answer that was repeated many times already in this forum (that main paying customers, i.e. corporations, want things locked down) does make sense but is in fact the opposite of progress ...

unifex said:

Two main things that need to be configured - remove the search bar and remove the Recommended section. That is clearly impossible. Grouping or organizing icons in any sensible way is not possible either, although I did notice two nested folders in a screen shot from one of the posts in this thread - I'm going to see if that's possible, this did not work in Windows 10 and was annoying as hell.

Sure, one can live with it or come up with workarounds or install third-party software. Question is, why? The answer that was repeated many times already in this forum (that main paying customers, i.e. corporations, want things locked down) does make sense but is in fact the opposite of progress ...

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Well they could have still locked things down without changing the start menu. And Microsoft does provide a mechanism for corporations to do what they want and lock things in particular they want locked and that is group policy, so they could have used that. So question is, why the change?

Wisewiz said:

It's very configurable, and it's not such a hard task.
And I've had mine more or less this way since day 1, it's gone through two version changes, and nothing whatsoever on the 18-icon page or in the taskbar has been "set back." And the two Start Menu\Programs folders are easy to edit, with added shortcuts and folders, and even folders inside folders, as you wish, to change the All Apps list.
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Thank you for your post. I agree. being able to pin apps and shortcuts right there is great, did I like windows 10 start menu the A - Z list(Inconvenient). This is better by miles than that plus a huge favorite for me in Win 11 is the centering of everything. Placing the icons center screen, combining lots of things and with huge visual and organizational aspects of Win 11, I love it.

This one signature of Windows, you'd think they'd learn to stop completely messing with it. Because it seems to be the #1 gripe every time they change it. They can easily make the UI flyout and do all the pretty stuff they want, but should just keep the main Programs tree that has always been with Windows there. The new interface makes you click an extra small button to view the whole tree. Whereas previous iterations you can just click start menu and see the tree.

geneo said:

Well they could have still locked things down without changing the start menu. And Microsoft does provide a mechanism for corporations to do what they want and lock things in particular they want locked and that is group policy, so they could have used that. So question is, why the change?

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The only other thought that comes to mind is that Windows 11 is being made by a different generation of programmers. They might not see things exactly the same way I (or people of my generation) do. For me it's important to keep things organized. That's why for me a list of programs or a collection of shortcuts has to be configurable so that I can organize them in a way that makes sense to me and makes life easier for me. They might think that's not necessary since you can search for anything and that's more effective so these lists are not needed. For me that's nonsense, I have the Search service disabled and Cortana not allowed in Group Policy since I don't use them and I don't want to use them. But they are not doing it for me ...

johnpd said:

I suppose you could go through and rearrange everything but that is a pain.

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You have to do that with phones. They just don't ship 'your' way.

But I agree with everything else you said.

Wisewiz said:

Some just drop down sub-folders right in the All Apps list, or show several apps shortcuts. But I understand your dissatisfaction with what can be done in there.

To each his own. I'm going to live with it until I get my TLB back. Maybe I'll try one of the blank-blank-Back programs, but not yet.

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how on gods green earth are you getting subfolders to show up? my workflow was 1-2 punched out of existence with windows 11. between the inability to move taskbar/tray to another monitor and the inability to display subfolders in the start menu (or so i thought?) its been awful.

I have had things meticulously sorted since ever and was using open-shell up until windows 11. now whether i use the native start menu or start 11 with the windows 11 style, i cant get any of my subfolders to display.
for example I have a "games" folder thats broken into subfolders, emulators, launchers, standard games, virtual reality games, steam games, and when i transplanted my backed up programdata\microsoft\windows\start menu\programs\games folder into win11 it just lumped them all into one giant folder. while another mark against 11 for me, if i had to that could be worked around.
my development folder has about a dozen subfolders and lumping all that together is a complete non starter.