Here’s what the new Start menu brings in Windows 10

Oct 1, 2014 13:46 GMT  ·  By

Windows 10 sure comes with a lot of changes and also includes a Start menu, but Microsoft tried to make the new operating system better for each and every user category, so several new customization options are also expected to be included.

Microsoft hasn’t provided too many details about the Start menu in its official Windows 10 unveiling event in San Francisco, but a video posted today on Vine comes to show that the new menu would indeed be highly customizable as far as its dimensions are concerned.

The leaked Windows 10 screenshots that reached the web in the past few weeks indeed confirmed that the Start menu would be highly customizable, but it wasn’t clear whether Microsoft was planning to add new options or actually offer the options that were already included in Windows 7.

Now it appears that the Windows 10 Start menu comes not only with a fresh design, but also with new settings that allow you to change its dimensions based on your preferences.

Manual resizing mode

One of the new features available in the Windows 10 Start menu is the manual resizing mode which allows users to easily change the dimensions of the menu in the same way they do when trying to resize a window.

What’s more, the Start menu automatically changes its dimensions as you add new live tiles, so the more tiles, the bigger the Start menu actually gets.

Needless to say, the Start menu could eat up your entire screen, more or less becoming a desktop-based Start screen that provides access to installed apps, a search box which can be used to look for information online and offline, and live tiles.

Only enabled by default on PCs

The Start menu will clearly make more sense on PCs and laptops where mice and keyboards remain the preferred input method, but on tablets and other touch-capable devices, users would still get the Start screen.

A dedicated option in the taskbar properties screen will allow users to disable the Start menu and boot instead to the Start screen, thus reverting to the original configuration in Windows 8.

At this point, it’s not yet clear whether the Start menu will remain the same until Windows 10 comes out, but Microsoft has already confirmed that it plans to add new options by spring 2015, so expect a number of other settings and configuration options to be introduced in the coming updates.