- Microsoft has a start menu redesign in the tests
- This presents new designs for the list of all applications.
- One of those designs is a category view, and we have had confirmation of Microsoft that it will not be possible to customize this to your liking
We have just learned more about how the Microsoft renewed start menu will work when it reaches Windows 11, and not everyone is happy with the new information transmitted here.
The latest Windows reports on a customization element that does not reach what some Windows 11 users expected, and refers to one of the new designs that are entered for the application list.
As you will remember, with the redesigned start menu, which is found in the compilations of Windows 11 now, the long list of applications installed on the PC can be established in a couple of more compact alternative designs, one of which is a grid and the other a category view.
It is the last thing we are interested here, in which applications are grouped into different categories, such as games, productivity, creativity, social, public services, etc. Each of these categories has a box in which up to four icons appear for the most used applications, and the complete list of applications is within whether it opens the category, all of which allows an easy way to locate the application you are looking for, instead of moving through a long alphabetical list.
So what is the meat that has risen here? Windows Latter has received confirmation from Microsoft that it will not be possible to create its own types of categories.
Windows 11, of course, will make decisions on how to classify applications and where they belong, but there are some interesting, and less ideal nuances, collected by Windows Last here.
Any application that Windows 11 will not be sure in the ‘other’ category, for one thing. In addition, if there are no three applications for a certain category, because it does not have enough creativity applications installed in its machine, for example, then an application of street creativity (as paint) will be thrown in others.
ANALYSIS: Improved customization could still be offered luckily
If Microsoft gave people the ability to make their own category folders, they could have some alternative spills land to others, categories named so that the user can better remember what applications it contains.
However, with the Windows 11 supervision category allocation, it seems that Microsoft wants to maintain a loose rein in the groups that are present in this part of the interface. Unfortunately, it is also not possible to move an application from one category to another, (such as Windows Last has highlighted in the past), in case you disagree with the place where it has been placed, and this last ability is a more revealing deficiency here.
The new start menu remains in the tests, so Microsoft can make changes before it reaches the finished version of Windows 11. That is completely possible, especially since Microsoft has been stressing how it is listening to users’ comments to better inform Windows 11 design, the review of the start menu was included.
Therefore, simply being able to drag and release icons between these categories is something that we can expect, to reclassify any given application: it is a fairly basic functionality, after all. Eventually we can define our own categories too, but for now it seems that Microsoft is adopting a fairly rigid approach to customization with this part of the menu.
Wait that this image change of the start menu is one of the central Windows 11 25h2 pillars when it occurs at the end of this year.