Microsoft's New Look Start Menu for Windows 10

Quick update from Microsoft – they’ve changed the look of the Start Menu in Windows 10. It will be added this summer as part of the Windows 10 Anniversary Edition release. Below is Nick Heath’s take on TechRepublic.

Windows 10: Here’s Microsoft’s new look Start menu

Microsoft revealed the updated appearance in an early build of the OS, which it released to testers in the Windows 10 Insider program on Friday.

The new look Start menu makes the ‘All Apps’ list visible by default on the left-hand side. In another new addition, a selection of the user’s ‘Most-used’ apps are shown at the top of this permanently visible ‘All Apps’ list. Microsoft says the change should reduce the clicking and scrolling needed to access apps.

The Power, Settings and File Explorer icons are also always visible in the left rail of the Start menu and the ‘Recently added’ section will display three entries, instead of one. Any folders that users have added to the Start menu are now immediately accessible without having to click the hamburger icon.

The look of the Start menu in tablet mode has also been overhauled, turning the ‘All Apps’ list into a fullscreen menu, reminiscent of the Windows 8.1 Start screen. Gabe Aul, VP for Microsoft’s engineering systems team, says the switch to fullscreen was a ‘top request from Windows Insiders’, adding that ‘the grid-like implementation of the full-screen ‘All Apps’ list aims to provide efficiency while taking advantage of the additional real estate on the Start screen on a tablet’.

The final Start menu change is designed to make it easier to toggle between pinned tiles and the ‘All Apps’ list, by providing the option to do so in the menu’s left rail.

To read the rest of Nick’s article, click here.