The start menu is one of the most criticized elements of Windows 11. After carrying many versions of the system with a more or less similar menu, until Windows 7, with the arrival of Windows 8 Microsoft completely broke the concept of the system menu. With the arrival of Windows 10, experiments continued with this section, without success. And with Windows 11Microsoft did it again, generating even more discomfort among users.
We know very well that, with the launch of Windows 12, one of the Windows elements that will change the most will be this menu. However, it is possible that we could see a new version of it much sooner than we imagine. Of course, it probably doesn’t fit exactly what we all had in mind.
Start Menu Companions, the new start menu add-on
As we can see on the Twitter account of Albacore, one of the largest Windows Insiders, the latest development version of the Microsoft system, build 26212, has been introduced silently (that is, without reflecting it in the list of changes). Windows) a new function called «Start Menu Companions«.
It’s time for the Start menu to become extensible!✨
Windows 11 β build 26212 quietly introduces support for “Start Menu Companions.” They’re apps that provide Adaptive Cards which display on a floating island (docked ➡️ or ⬅️) alongside Start
Used Widgets data as a quick demo 😊 https://t.co/FddrpC99h3May 10, 2024 • 11:01
What this new feature does is add a floating panel to one of the sides (to choose between right or left) of the start menu where we can add the widgets that we want to always have in view. These new widgets read the information directly from the widget panel of the operating system itself, so we will have to have them configured, and activated, in this panel (at least, for now) if we want them to be displayed correctly.
As can be seen in the leaked screenshots, in the Settings panel > Personalization > Start Menu we will have a new option that will allow us to activate or deactivate this feature, as well as choose which side of the menu we want to display the widgets on.
Another important novelty that we have been able to find is the possibility of ask Copilot for help to help us find any term we are looking for in the search bar of the Settings window itself. To use it, it is necessary that our PC already has Copilot enabled, and activate the function using the ID “49445394” using the Vivetool tool.
How to test it
At the moment there is not much more information about this function. This is something very experimental that only this Insider has been tested. We don’t really know how the feature will work in the end, whether it will read data directly from the widgets or have a JSON that we can configure. Nor what are the widgets that we can pin, because right now we have only seen the stock market and the weather.
At the moment, even if we have this latest Insider build of Windows 11 installed, we will not be able to enable this feature even if we wanted to. But, if it eventually becomes an official feature, it won’t take long for Microsoft to let it see and test users within the Insider program. And, if in the end everything goes ahead, it will surely be one of the star features of the Windows 11 24H2 update, which should be released in the fall of this year.
