Windows 10 Start Menu Alternatives

Not completely happy with the Commencement Carte du jour in Windows 10? It'southward well-designed and offers a host of useful features. You can view the traditional vertical carte and a tiled carte du jour next; access your most used and recently added apps; choose which folders appear; and switch between the standard Start menu and the fully tiled First Screen. However, information technology's missing 1 key characteristic—the ability to organise it.

Windows 10 Bug Art With the Windows seven Start Carte du jour, you lot can create, delete, and rename folders and shortcuts. You lot can move shortcuts from ane folder to some other. In short, you lot tin can customise it even so that accessing your favorite programs is quick and piece of cake.

Tertiary-party alternatives gained favour with Windows 8 since it lacked any kind of Commencement Menu. Even so, you may still discover them useful as replacements for the Windows 10 Start Menu as they tin can be organised with meliorate access to your favorite folders and software.

Let'southward expect at 2 such Windows 10 Start menu alternatives.

Classic Shell

The gratis Classic Crush utility became a hit as a Start Menu for Windows viii and carries on with Windows x. Click on the Classic Shell Start button and y'all'll have a choice of displaying the card in a single column, dual columns, or in the classic Windows 7 mode.

The dual columns display your favorite apps or all programs on the left and various Windows locations and settings on the correct.

You can change the expect and feel of the card past applying different skins. Right-click on the Starting time Push button and click on Settings, and you lot'll detect a potpourri of other options.

Maybe best of all, you can organise the Classic Shell Start menu. Right-click on the Start button and then click on Open or Open All Users. That movement launches a File Explorer window pointing to the folders that brand upwards the Start Menu. From at that place, y'all tin create, delete, and rename folders and shortcuts. And so for instance, you could create a folder named Web Browsers and movement the shortcuts to all your browsers into that one folder.

The Apps Lists remains a fixture, and then you can still view all your installed programs alphabetically. Interestingly, you tin hands revert dorsum to the Windows ten Offset Menu with a single click or tap.

Commencement ten

Another fully functional Start menu culling, Start10 is similar in many means to Classic Shell. You tin choose from among three looks—a Windows seven style with 2 traditional columns; a 'modern' manner with a more than sleek, transparent appearance; and a Windows x style with the tiled pane on the right.

The familiar two-column and modern styles display your folders and shortcuts on the left pane and sure Windows 10 sections, such equally your Documents Folder, Pictures, Music, and Control Panel on the left.

Right-click on the Start10 Start Button, click on the command to 'Configure Kickoff 10', and yous'll see the Settings screen where yous can tweak several elements of the program, including its appearance, the look of the Offset button, and fifty-fifty the texture of the taskbar.

Yous tin check out Start10 for complimentary on a xxx-twenty-four hour period trial basis or pony upwards Us$4.99 to purchase the product outright.

Near Lance Whitney

Lance Whitney

Surviving a long and varied career in publishing, advertising, and IT, Lance Whitney now wears a few different technology hats. By day, he's a announcer, software trainer, and sometime Web developer. By night, he'due south asleep. These days, he writes news stories, columns, and reviews for CNET and other engineering science sites and publications. He'south written two books for Wiley & Sons: Windows 8 5 Minutes at a Time in 2022, and Teach Yourself VISUALLY LinkedIn in 2022. Contact Lance via Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.