Here's how to shrink the giant Windows 11 Start menu and hide unwanted sections using the August 2026 optional update and ViVeTool commands.

Microsoft says that Start menu search will get better: more predictable, faster, and fewer wrong app hits. Microsoft says it will cut search clutter — fewer ads/recommendations and better focus on ...

Microsoft has changed the way the Start Menu looks in Windows 11. Apart from displaying a Recommended section, it now displays a Category section, which makes the Start Menu look rather big. If you ...

I’ve always hated the Windows 11 Start menu. For me, it’s badly designed, clumsy to use, and difficult to customize. If you share my grievances, know that Microsoft has overhauled the old menu in an ...

To remove the Recommended and All sections from the Windows 11 Start Menu, first disable Recommended items in Settings under Personalization > Start by turning off all recommendation toggles. To ...

If your Windows 11 Start Menu search was acting weird for the past couple of days, Microsoft has finally acknowledged and fixed it via a server-side fix on April 8, 2026 (via Bleeping Computer).

If you open the Start menu, start typing, and Windows 11 stuffs your results with Bing links and “Search the web” suggestions, this guide shows you how to stop it and keep local-only results. The fix ...

Users of older versions of Windows 11 who have been experiencing problems with searching in the Start menu should notice that things are getting back to how they should be. Microsoft has started the ...

In the upper area, you can define the general layout and control how many icons should appear in the Start menu. In the Start menu settings, you can use sliders to specify what Windows 11 should and ...

Patrick O'Rourke is XDA's News Editor and Entertainment Segment Lead. Previously, he was Pocket-lint's Editor-in-Chief, the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian tech publication MobileSyrup, and earlier in his ...