Windows 11 22H2 adds several new organizational and quality of life features to the Start menu. This tutorial shows you how to take advantage of these improvements.
Among the many small but noticeable quality of life improvements Microsoft has made to: Windows 11 with the release of 22H2some of the most notable are: the start menu and its organizational capabilities. Improvements to grouping features, pinning protocols, and recommendation suggestions give users much more personal control and flexibility over how the Start Menu feels and works.
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Microsoft has chosen not to prominently advertise these improvements and instead Windows 11 users discover these new features for themselves. We’ll remedy that slight oversight with a short tutorial on what the Start Menu features have changed in Windows 11 22H2 and what those changes mean for you and how you work and play.
Improvements to Start menu features in Windows 11 22H2
Image A shows you what the Windows 11 start menu looks like in standard mode with all extra features disabled. Notice how disorganized and haphazard the pinned applications appear in the Start menu.
Image A
The first step to make the Start menu more organized under Windows 11 22H2 is to activate display functions in Settings. Open the Settings app and click on the Personalization item in the navigation bar on the left. Scroll down the list on the right and click on the Start item (Figure B).
Figure B
In the first section of this Settings page, you can change the layout of the Start menu. Personally, I prefer to display as many pinned apps as possible while squeezing out the Recommendations section. You can choose to do the exact opposite or keep the default setting.
You can also enable the three features on this page to provide more variety in your Start Menu (Figure C). The choice of which features to use is up to you, but I recommend activating the Show recently added apps feature as it allows you to pin new apps after you install them.
Figure C
When you’ve made your decisions for this page, exit Settings, then reopen the Windows 11 Start menu to see what’s changed. As you can see in Figure Dthe pinned portion has grown significantly, while the recommended portion has shrunk.
Figure D
Although we now have more pinned apps in the Start menu, they are not well organized or conveniently grouped. With the release of Windows 11 22H2, we can fix that problem.
You can drag and drop the app icons anywhere in the Start menu, but Windows 11 22H2 adds another organizational feature as well. We group all Microsoft 365 apps in their own single apps folder. This frees up some space in the pinned area of the Start menu for other apps.
With your mouse, hold the icon for an app (Excel in this example) and drag it to another app icon (Word) and drop it there. As you can see in Digits Ethose two pinned apps will now form a single pinned folder containing both applications.
Digits E
Do the same drag-and-drop procedure for all Microsoft 365 apps and you’ll create one icon that contains all those productivity apps in one central pinned location (Figure F).
Figure F
This process has also freed up a whole row of spots in the Windows 11 Start Menu where we can pin other applications. This technique allows you to group similar apps based on your chosen criteria, giving you the ability to organize and personalize the Windows 11 22H2 Start menu as you see fit.
