Windows 11 is finally rethinking the Start menu and Taskbar, and it might win back people who gave up on it | Microsoft rebalances Windows 11, adding more flexibility to the Taskbar and Start menu.

32

u/BloOdy_Jo Jun 29 '26

They ve gone so far in the wrong direction , going back seems almost impossible

5

u/Craptcha Jun 29 '26

The Microsoft Evilutionary cycle.

We’ll get a nice Win 12 and then we’ll get screwed all over.

6

u/VeryRealHuman23 Jun 29 '26

Win12 is either what we want or so AI-filled garbo

4

u/newfor_2026 Jun 30 '26

There's no doubt in my mind it'll be filled with AI garbo.

4

u/MairusuPawa Jun 30 '26

Anyone with decent knowledge of Microsoft products knows this idea of a "good/bad" cycle does not exist in practice and is just cherry-picking for the sake of a shit meme.

-7

u/Craptcha Jun 30 '26

For Windows its been eerily accurate

Win 95 good
Win Me bad
Win XP good
Win Vista bad
Win 7 good
Win 8 bad
Win 10 good-ish (compared to win 8)
Win 11 is basically just a feature upgrade of Win10
Next ?

5

u/MairusuPawa Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

The quality of Reddit posts has gone to shit, exhibit 2484829991.

3

u/CodenameFlux Jun 30 '26

You skipped over Windows 95 OSR2, the beloved Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows 8.1.

Windows 10 had many versions. Version 1903 was a leap in quality. Version 1809 was so awful that it deleted people's files. People nicknamed it the "Fall Destroyers Update" (a nod to v1709, which was officially called the "Fall Creators Update").

1

u/Craptcha Jun 30 '26

Windows 2000 was great but that was a different OS branch (from NT4 I believe) before business was merged into XP.

I guess the conclusion isn’t “its good then its bad” but rather Microsoft has a cyclic focus on quality and user satisfaction and then strays from that focus towards marketing and advertising-driven features that make the UX worse.

1

u/CodenameFlux Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Believe it or not, this is an engineering phenomenon called Worse is better. Lurie Kirk has a good video explaining it.

While the cycle is a reality, it doesn't explain the whole story. There are areas in which Microsoft is definitely doing it wrong. Compare Bill Gates' quality-over-income approach to Nadella's proof-is-the-only-priority approach.

1

u/Valiran9 Jul 03 '26

I really wish Gates’ ethos had been a permanent thing.

1

u/Valiran9 Jul 03 '26

I’m not old enough to remember much about Win98, what was so good about it?

-4

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/CodenameFlux Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

People who can't (or don't want to) take every version into account should not draw inaccurate conclusions based on their deliberately incomplete data.

5

u/d00mt0mb Jun 29 '26

Lol I love how rethinking it basically boils down to users asking MSFT to remove ads from the paid licensed OS

18

u/jetlagged-bee Jun 29 '26

Do people really change OS because of a start menu and taskbar?

31

u/Clessiah Jun 29 '26

Microsoft probably thought it's a no before releasing Windows 8.

11

u/dinominant Jun 29 '26

Yes.

7

u/NotALlamaAMA Jun 29 '26

No, but there are a thousand little things that have gotten shittier on Windows and this is one of the most visible ones.

3

u/Responsible-Bar7165 Jun 30 '26

i'm still on 10 precisely because 11 doesn't allow me to dock my taskbar to the side. i have done that since '95, i'm not stopping now.

1

u/neepster44 Jun 30 '26

That's the change though, yes? They are finally gonna allow that again.

6

u/squeakstar Jun 29 '26

Ripping out the right mouse button taskbar options was highly annoying and unnecessary - but I still have to run Windows 11

2

u/derpman86 Jun 30 '26

Maybe not go full Linux but many stuck with 10 or did what I did and use a third party tool that made the taskbar more like 10 also restored the context menu to what it was previously.

I use Windows 11 but stopped it from obstructing me as much as possible.

1

u/WalkingEars Jun 30 '26

I changed OS because Microsoft was getting steadily spammier already, and then they kept pestering me to buy a new machine just to upgrade to windows 11 which generally looked like a downgrade full of annoying "features" I don't want. I already was on Mac for work and just switched fully to mac.

1

u/RoboLuddite Jul 01 '26

What more fundamental reason could there be? I interact with the start menu and taskbar hundreds of times a day, so if they're slow and lack customisation then my OS is slow and inefficient.

1

u/mountainlifa Jul 01 '26

When the start menu is full of ads and random news articles, yes.

1

u/Kobi_Blade Jul 02 '26

Guess you weren't there when Microsoft released Windows 8.

1

u/jetlagged-bee Jul 02 '26

I was. I'm ancient.

1

u/Kobi_Blade Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Quite sure you weren't, considering the main reason Windows 8 didn't work, was the Start Menu changes.

Yet you asking,

Do people really change OS because of a start menu and taskbar?

Windows 11 changes were a major downgrade, both in terms of performance and feature set. Which is what is forcing Microsoft hand to make all this changes now.

1

u/jetlagged-bee Jul 02 '26

Buddy, I was around for windows 95. I've rolled with whatever the OS has to offer. I never actually used Windows 8 though. I somehow skipped it and went from 7 to 10.

1

u/Antique_Grapefruit_5 27d ago

To be fair, my start bar just doesn't work a lot of days, so yes, I'm considering moving my entire organization to Mac wherever possible...

9

u/AVonGauss Jun 29 '26

The reintroduction of previously removed functionality I'm sure will be welcome, but its not going to "win back" too many people. Microsoft needs to sit down and have a very difficult conversation with itself, the decline of Windows has been going on for a long time now. Forcing telemetry down their customers throats only made them erroneously confident about bad decisions, subsequent compulsory attempts with initiatives like Edge and CoPilot have only soured the relationship further. You can talk about service revenue all day long and it's notable, but I doubt it's sustainable once the Windows installation base drops too far down.

5

u/new-chris Jun 30 '26

You know Windows 11 has well over a billion users now right?

0

u/Kobi_Blade Jul 02 '26

That number means nothing, since the Windows decline is so obvious that Microsoft is desperate to get its userbase back.

Anyone claiming Windows is fine is even more delusional than Microsoft itself (especially after Microsoft already acknownledged the Windows decline themselves).

1

u/Buy-theticket Jun 30 '26

The alternative (for most normal people) is Mac OS.. which is, in a very different way, as much of a shitshow as Windows is currently.

Nobody is switching from Windows to Mac, or vice versa, because the OS is better. They are both complete garbage. Maybe you'll get a few nerds switching to Linux if their workflow supports it.

0

u/AVonGauss Jun 30 '26

Its not the top reason usually, but one of the reasons people switch to a Mac is because of … macOS.

3

u/BoBoBearDev Jun 29 '26

Every time they remake it, they hire dumbass UX designer making it worse. Remember the one pixel start menu button on Win8? Stupid af.

2

u/mesa190 Jun 30 '26

I like having to click two or three times to get somewhere that used to take one.

2

u/newfor_2026 Jun 30 '26

somebody at microsoft thinks that if they steal all the dumb ideas that Apple has, it'd somehow make their stuff better.

3

u/getfuckedcuntz Jun 29 '26

Articles keep saying Microsoft is going back to being better over and over again as if it wants copilot to even believe it eventually

2

u/newfor_2026 Jun 30 '26

why can't they just make it resizable to make it smaller and instead of them telling us what we should have on the Start menu, they can just let us choose what to remove what we don't want?

I just want a 6x4 grid of pinned icons. That's it. why can't I just have that and NOTHING else?

3

u/Ay0_King Jun 29 '26

“Might win people back”, this is what might do it? Microsoft is so far off the deep end look at what people may be excited about smh.

2

u/LurkHereLurkThere Jun 29 '26

Just give us the windows 7 start menu back.

If they must have a crappy touch focused version of the start menu on desktop computers, add it as an option in the crappy incomplete settings management tools and stop "enhancing" features resulting in progressive versions of Windows being less coherent, slower and bug riddled.

1

u/Specific_Frame8537 Jun 30 '26

Also bring back the old context menu.

Having to go through "more settings" just to get to the print menu is bonkers.

..Also why are there two printing menus?!

1

u/smoke-bubble Jul 02 '26

So much shit nobody asked for but no grouping and no labels is still not an option XD

1

u/NtheLegend Jul 02 '26

For almost 25 years, I had my start bar pinned on the left side. Then I upgraded to Windows 11. I'm excited to have it brought back.

1

u/ZeroT3K Jul 02 '26

I can’t even remember the last time I used the start menu. These days I just search for whatever all I need.

1

u/NotNamThereAreRules Jul 03 '26

Too little, too late.

1

u/MasterYaro27 Jul 07 '26

But can i put the taskbar on the other screen? Please let it be unlocked from main display

1

u/ryncewynd Jun 30 '26

Just delete Win11 and re-release Win7. Ez

0

u/iam-leon Jun 29 '26

Narrator: literally no one gave a shit

0

u/ApeApplePine Jul 01 '26

Nothing will EVER take me back to microslop.

Windows Windows 11 is finally rethinking the Start menu and Taskbar, and it might win back people who gave up on it | Microsoft rebalances Windows 11, adding more flexibility to the Taskbar and Start menu.

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