Windows 10 marks the return of the Start Menu. Microsoft did away with this classic Windows feature with the launch of Windows 8, when the company introduced a Start Screen that covers your entire display. It looked great on tablets, but some folks found it to be a bit much for notebooks and desktops.

Now the Windows Start Menu is back… but it’s different. The Windows 10 Start Menu features apps and settings on the left and Start Screen-style live tiles on the right.

Don’t like the live tiles? There are few ways to make them go away.

start10_01

Option 1: Unpin all your tiles

You can right-click on any tile and choose Unpin from Start to make it disappear. Don’t need weather conditions in your Start Menu? Get rid of the weather app. Don’t want a shortcut to the Windows Store? It’s gone.

So what happens if you unpin all the items? At first you’ll just see a blank section to the right of your most used, recently used, and settings shortcuts. But you can click the edge of that blank space and drag it to the left to collapse the unused space.

start10_03

Now your Start Menu looks a bit more like the classic menus we’ve seen in Windows 7 and earlier.

Want to make it look exactly like the Windows 7 start menu?

Option 2: Use a third-party app like Start10

A few years ago Stardock introduced an app called Start8 that brought a Windows 7-style Start Menu to Windows 8.

Now the company has  new version called Start10. It basically does the same thing, but it has a few new tricks including the ability to mimic the official Windows 10 Start Menu style if that’s something you want to do for some reason.

start10_02

There are several different apps that bring a classic menu to Windows 10, but Start10 is a good place to start because the app only costs $5 and you can try it for free for up to 30 days before paying anything.

Note that even if you hate live tiles, there are a few reasons to give the new Start Menu a try. You can right-click on any app to uninstall it, for instance. And you can pin the Recycle Bin to your Windows 10 Start Menu.

On the other hand, Start10 offers a bunch of customization options: you can change the look of the Start logo, change the size of icons, and even configure the app so that clicking the bottom left corner of your desktop brings up the Start10 menu, while pressing the Windows key on your keyboard brings up the official Windows 10 Start Menu (or vice versa).

start10_05

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

14 replies on “Goodbye live tiles: Give Windows 10 a classic start menu”

  1. classic shell is open source and looks just as good as any. I’m interested to play with Win10’s start menu…. but i’m thinking i’ll probably toss if after a while.

  2. The problem is MS claiming to LISTEN to the public and yet here we are with a buggy start menu no less. Is it so hard to include a real classic start menu as an option? Yes we have choices but we should not have to depend on 3rd party with possibly even more bugs/issues. By not even including it as a side option they are saying…screw you…you want classic here take it, but only how WE want it to be. No one is saying not try to innovate to try new ways of doing things but don’t make it the ONLY option.

  3. Seems like the people who claim to “love” cutting edge technology are the one who hate change

    1. I like cutting edge technology. I don’t like cutting edge technology with this-should-still-be-in-beta-but-we’ve-got-a-deadline-to-meet ergonomics.

    1. And, it’s $2.99 vs $5 for Start10, or cheaper if you buy multiple copies.

  4. I don’t mind the tiles, but then i didn’t mind the start “page” in Windows 8 either. Not that i had much to do with it once i got my most used stuff either on the desktop or on the taskbar.

  5. How about Microsoft consider upgrading Windows 10 to just have a real Start Menu in the first place. That change alone would help drive adoption. Make the Metro fans install some extra crap if they want tiles.

    1. chill the fudge out breh, some consmetic changes on an operating system shouldn’t make you this angry. There are about a trillion and one, ways to get around ever having to see the start menu, or to change it exactly to what you wanted. there are many reasons why having this menu is advantageous, including the ease of uninstalling applications or having today’s weather right there instead of having some resource hogging, cheesy widget that you end up fucking hating. what about the ability to WINDOWS KEY + X, or right-click on start for the ‘power menu’. no longer do we have to ‘Run’ regedit, or go to msconfig.

      what im trying to say is, relax, everything is going to be okay.

      1. … he says, as Windows 10 tanks even worse than Windows 8. Remember all of those claims of huge Win8 adoption when it turned to to be total BS? Time to get righteous Microsoft, before time is up.

    2. Oh come on, there aren’t any actual metro fans, right? The first thing I did in windows 10 was remove every single tile.

  6. Classicshell is free for personal AND commercial use. Used that on windows 8. I do find myself liking the new start menu more than the traditional one though

    1. I’m a windows 7 user. I don’t feel the need to install classic shell for windows 10. I am liking the windows 10 start menu! My only complaint is while browsing all apps, I can’t press S and skip to S. And entering it into Cortana’s box doesn’t always bring the app up as an option. So then you gotta open all apps and spin the mouse wheel or scroll manually.

Comments are closed.