More so-called valuable content coming to the Start menu

Nov 21, 2022 20:13 GMT  ·  By

Windows 11 launched with a modern Start experience, and without a doubt, many of those who upgraded from Windows 10 or Windows 7 found the new operating system rather unfamiliar.

Basically, the new desktop moved everything to the center of the screen, with the taskbar icons no longer aligned to the left.

The Start menu itself also went through a major transformation. The live tiles were dropped, and the overall design was based on the one in Windows 10X, an operating system that has since been abandoned, with only the Start menu design surviving in Windows 11.

Since the debut of Windows 11, the Start menu has been receiving more polishing, especially as Microsoft developed new features to improve its main purpose.

The most recent Windows 11 preview build, however, comes with something totally controversial: recommended websites right in the Start menu.

In other words, when you click the Start menu, Windows 11 now also displays recommended websites, obviously in the recommended items section.

While many rushed to call this a new attempt to bring ads to Windows 11 users, this isn’t anything like that. The purpose of this feature is to make it easier and faster to access the websites you visit most often.

This means you shouldn’t see websites other than the ones that you actually visit on your device, as Microsoft wants to make the whole experience a bit more straightforward and turn the Start menu into the starting point even for browsing.

Needless to say, Microsoft knows this new experience might not be everybody’s cup of tea, so the company is offering additional controls that will let users decide how they want these recommendations to show up in the Start menu. For example, users will be allowed to block a certain website from being displayed as a recommendation in the Start menu with just a right click, while dedicated options in the Settings app will make it possible to disable the recommendations altogether.

“We’ve been working on adding more valuable content to the Recommended section in Start and are excited to introduce a new content type: websites. For the first phase, we will recommend common websites based on your region or browsing history to help you easily get back to the websites you care about. This can be controlled by right-clicking on a website and choosing to remove that website individually or to stop showing all recommended websites entirely. Only some Insiders will see this experience and, if you do, please share your feedback,” Microsoft says.

As the company itself explains, not all insiders are currently seeing the new recommendations in the Start menu, so it will probably take a while until the feature makes its way to production devices.

Of course, there’s absolutely no ETA in this regard, but for the time being, it’s pretty clear that Microsoft wants to collect as much feedback as possible before beginning a wider rollout.

What I think is more intriguing, however, is the “first phase” that Microsoft is talking about in the official announcement. The wording seems to suggest that other phases would follow as well, so it will certainly be interesting to see how Microsoft wants these recommendations to work in the first place.

On the other hand, if the software giant decides to display websites other than the ones visited by users on their devices, there’s no doubt this would be a risky move, as the company would get much closer to the ad push that everybody hates these days.