After years of Windows 11, Microsoft is finally taking a wrench to the Start menu. While not everyone dislikes it, it's definitely one of the sore spots people have when upgrading from Windows 10 to 11, given the lack of customization you have versus the older Windows version. Now, the company has broken down the reasoning behind its new Start redesign, giving everyone a sneak peek into what they can expect from it.

Microsoft explains its design reasoning behind the new Windows 11 Start menu

In a blog post titled "Start, Fresh — Redesigning the Windows Start menu for you," the company takes a magnifying glass to its own Start menu redesign and explains why it made the choices it did. It starts off with this pretty noble-sounding statement:

Great design usually begins with a whisper, not a thunderclap.

Over coffee chats, Feedback Hub notes, and thousands of remote interviews, we heard the same refrain:

“Help me find my apps faster. Let me bend Start to fit the way I work. And please—keep the magic, don’t lose the soul.”

Those voices lit the path ahead, inspiring our design decisions.

I'm pretty sure I've never heard anyone criticise the Windows 11 Start menu with the phrase "keep the magic, don't lose the soul"; in fact, I think I heard the statement "why can't I put it on all sides of the screen" a lot more. But hey, I wasn't keeping count of them.

Microsoft goes on to explain that the new Start menu has a few enhanced features. This includes dynamic recommendations that take context into account, an easier time finding the app you want, more seamless blending with mobile devices, more personalisation tweaks, and speed improvements. It all sounds very promising, so here's hoping the new Windows 11 Start menu can achieve what the old one couldn't.

If you're still not convinced by Microsoft's offerings with a new Start menu, you don't have to use its solutions. There are plenty of apps out there that revamp the Windows 11 Start menu and add functionalities that people have been begging for for years now. For instance, there are the five Start menu alternatives and Windows tweaks that will speed up your workflow, and we have a comparison between Start11 and OpenShell to see which one is the best Start replacement for you.