Share your... (win10) start menu?

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by ShelLuser, May 28, 2020.

  1. Hi gang,

    Editorial

    I've been using Windows 10 for well over a year now and I really came to enjoy the OS quite a bit. From the heavily enhanced PowerShell (which is one of my favorite management tools), the expanded virtualization options (running Linux on Windows? No problem! And more if you use Hyper-V (Pro only)), sandbox mode (running a virtual Win10 'inside' your Windows 10 (Pro only)), MMC and several of its new modules, the dual monitor support (and how you can fully customize this; like using a different background on the 2nd monitor or even customize its start menu!) and...

    .... and then there's the start menu (again, since they temporarily dropped it in Windows 8).

    Fun fact: did you know that the start menu in Windows 10 is managed by its own dedicated process (build 1909 and up)? See for yourself: press control-shift-escape or right click on the clock in the taskbar and select "task manager". If needed make it show all details and then simply search your process list for "Start" (or "Starten" in Dutch). If you stop that process then you'll also stop your start menu ;)

    Anyway, the start menu in Windows 10 is something special I think because you can make it as simple or as complex as you want it to be, especially if the software you have pinned also provides support for updating live tiles. Then consider the fact that the start menu will also use the systems theme color and you got yourself quite a customized setup, or so I think.

    So I figured... care to share?

    My (green) start menu



    The main theme color on my Windows 10 environment is green which has everything to do with the Ghost in the Shell backgrounds which I use on my (dual monitor) desktop, as such the green icons.

    As you can see I divided my start menu into 5 groups: Connectivity, Productivity, Games, Media and Development, this helps me to keep track of the software I use the most (and the live tiles of course).

    Connectivity: Basically a collection of several news apps together with my two favorite browsers (Opera & Edge) as well as WhatsApp, Netflix and the Ziggo app (this allows me to watch & manage my TV from behind my PC, very handy). I'm specifically fond of the "phone" app which allows you to connect a smartphone (either Apple or Android) with Windows so that all notifications get sent to your desktop as well.

    Productivity: I heavily rely on a todo list these days so, that's how this section starts. I really like how I can add a todo item on either my phone or on Windows after which it'll automatically appear on the other environment as well. Add an item to the "My day" section and its bound to pop up on my start screen. Then there's the Office suite, I'm using 2019 Professional on my desktop which I really enjoy. Although I also have Project installed I don't use it very often; the main reason it's there is for studying and to keep up a bit with current developments (I managed to grab a cheap (yet fully legitimate) license so figured why not) ;)

    Games: Obvious enough I think? When I first bought into Windows 10 (= upgraded to Pro) I also quickly decided that I was going to do some minor gaming on PC only (and leave the PS3 for what it was). That's how I ended up with Forza, the rest are all Steam games. My personal favorites being GTA 5, Skyrim, Arma 3 and TerraTech.

    Media: This is actually the most used section of the lot :) Although I don't do much with 3D modelling myself I keep some software around, mainly Daz Studio together with Bryce and Hexagon as well as The Gimp. The section which is used on an almost daily basis is my audio setup: Ableton Live, Reason, Maschine and Max 8 which are my main synth & audio programming environments respectfully. And then we have Melodyne & Vocaloid which I started using recently to add and enhance (artificial) vocals to some of my projects.

    Development: Last but not least my dev. section. The two main programs here are Visual Studio 2019 (community edition) as well as VS Code, I use both on a regular basis for some hobby projects and to set up & maintain some of my hobby websites (I've grown really fond of ASP.NET over the years). A specific tool here is Visual Paradigm (the red icon) which is my to-go-to tool for software design, data analysis & management as well as project management. Not as much as I used to, but yah ;)

    And there you have it ;)

    Of course it's not perfect and most definitely not without flaws (notice the blue "Foto's" tile? Yah, there should be a picture collage there) but I'm still pretty happy with this setup. Direct and easy access to the software which I most often use as well as immediate information about local news events, the financial markets and the weather.

    So yeah, do you have something fun to share?
  2. Wow, that's impressive! I only use my taskbar for such stuff, to be honest. The rest of my start menu is the default, except for Iter Lanatae, a game I developed for Latana's (my then best friend) 18th birthday anniversary, being added to it. :p
    When I reset my laptop a few weeks ago I found out that you could remove it altogether, and so I did. :) I should probably do that on desktop too, actually. Um... I can't find how to do it anymore, I can only turn off the program list, and I wouldn't mind keeping that. :p
    ShelLuser and Impulsive_Egg like this.
  3. Very interesting, nice setup!

    I personally don't use that space, so I just unpin all the things so the extension goes away. :p For most programs (including Word) I just use the search bar (by either clicking the start button or hitting the windows key, and then typing). I also don't use the alphabetical scrolling thing much, as searching is generally much quicker. Most of my files can be found through a few shortcuts on my desktop (school, music, random stuff, downloads, games). A few "highlights" are shortcuts on my desktop (like Minecraft (two times actually :p)).

    There are only three things pinned on my taskbar. What these are differ slightly from my desktop and my laptop.
    The first pinned thing is Chrome, the only browser I use on Windows.
    The second thing is "My Computer/This PC", which opens the This PC tab in Windows Explorer, so I can look at my drives (or even go to downloads or so). I currently have 4 drives installed, one which I should clean, and two which have all of my data, so the data isn't behind a Windows structure on those drives.
    The third pinned thing differs from my laptop and my desktop. I used to always have Snipping Tool there, but Windows 10 recently added a keyboard shortcut for opening a new version of Snipping Tool, "Snip and sketch" (Knippen en aantekenen in Dutch), so I mostly use that shortcut now. On my desktop I still have the Snip and sketch tool there, but on my laptop I recently replaced it with Screenkeyboard (Schermtoetsenbord), so if my keyboard is blocked by other things (genuinely happens often), I can use that to still properly type on the touchscreen. :)

    Here's the start menu from my desktop. I recently reinstalled Windows, so I haven't installed all programs yet. :p The location of my taskbar is on the top of my right monitor. It used to be on the bottom of my top monitors, but since I got this bigger monitor, the bottom of that monitor is hidden behind my middle monitor, so putting the taskbar there is not that convenient yet. :p



    ---

    And here's the start menu from my laptop:



    :)
    ShelLuser, 607 and Egeau like this.
  4. I'm on the same page as Tom: I don't use it :p

    It's compleatly clean



    My task bar is quite clean too, by the way:


    No clutter anywhere :p My desktop on my main screen has all the programs I use oftenly (Minecraft, Pathlologic, Word, Calibre) and the one on my second screen has some monetoring tools / cleanup programs and my virus scanner, and a map with all the small pragrams I have but usually don't use. :)
  5. I got nothing special

    FadedMartian and ShelLuser like this.
  6. Mine is pretty boring. I'm a taskbar type of guy

    ConductorConduit and ShelLuser like this.


  7. ... enough said...
    ConductorConduit, ShelLuser and 607 like this.
  8. Wait, why is there still a big grey box there? :p
    TomvanWijnen likes this.
  9. :eek:

    ha! That's brilliant! Yeah, nothing can go wrong if there are no programs to start, good thinking! :)
    Joy_the_Miner likes this.
  10. I'm famous lol
    Impulsive_Egg and ShelLuser like this.

  11. My entire task bar and start menu... not anything significant :p
    I typically end up using my desktop because if I have it on my taskbar I accidentally click it when I go to open something else... damn you File Explorer I wanted to open Chrome

    I would have more Steam games but currently I'm just playing MC for most of the day... Minecraft is the only game you need ;)
  12. I think I know where that photo is taken, roughly :p That is a very Dutch sunset :p
  13. I have it from very good authority that Tokyo would disagree with that ;) Looks can definitely be deceiving.

    But with the water and all.... Ben ik het wel met je eens dat dit wel heel erg op thuis lijkt ;) Ik zou gokken op het Ijsselmeer maar Friesland zou een directe 2e keuze voor me zijn :)

    Ey, don't blame me: you "accused" (naah! ;) ) us Dutch and all! :D
  14. Well if we're sharing desktop backgrounds now...


    Recently was looking for a new one that was How To Train Your Dragon related, one of my best friends was sitting next to me and he just took my laptop out of my lap, picked this picture, and set it as my background, and I haven't changed it since.
    Then again I don't really change custom pictures that often. My Facebook pic gets changed like two or three times a year nowadays, despite how active I am.

    Also I got all my quick access files and applications on the left
    vidya games and steam on my right. I haven't touched most of them in like 2 months cause like the comquat I am, I can only hyperfixate on one thing at a time c:
    Stnywitness and ShelLuser like this.
  15. Best thread derailment ever, because now we get to see some nice backgrounds~ ^^
    Impulsive_Egg likes this.
  16. Okay, I am going to look up how to get rid of those tiles, finally. :p
    Ah! Open the start menu, right click a tile and click "Unpin from Start". And then do that on all tiles. :p (of course you can keep the start menu open)
    I kept Iter Lanatae. :D
    And in response to Impulsive_Egg's post, I decided to include the desktop in the screencap.
  17. Let me just do the same :p


    Everyone alredey knew I am a colour freak, right? :p
    Impulsive_Egg, ShelLuser and 607 like this.
  18. Not sure if you were being sarcastic or not but as an artist lemme just say that that color scheme is beautifully dramatic :D
    Egeau likes this.
  19. "This thread is very old, and in most cases it is rude to "bump" it again."

    You know what? I love EMC's approach there, but considering I'm the one who started this shenanigans I think I'm safe 😎

    So, half a year ago (give or take) I shared my start menu and asked you guys if you'd be willing to do the same. So now comes another aspect of the fun part: looking back at history!

    Follow the link and you'll see my start menu as it was in May, and here we are today (it rhimes so it must be true!):



    You know what I like most about Windows 10 after having used it for almost 2 years? That hardly anything changes, and when it does then it's mostly happening in the "consumer shell" (as I like to call it) but "under the hood" you can still find the stuff you were used to. For example: icons which led to administrative options got removed from the start menu but.. they never got removed as MMC inserts.

    Alas, here's my new (current) start menu. As you can see most stuff never changed and I like it that way! But there are some notable changes:
    • I discovered 'Elite Dangerous' on Steam and that hit me hard; also considering that I've played Elite on my C64 back in the day. It's now on my start menu.
    • Another change in the games menu is 'Fallout 4'. It's "ok" I think, I sporadically play it and enjoy my time but.. it's not the same. It's fun (otherwise it wouldn't be in my start menu) but it's also hardly as satisfying as Fallout 3 or NV were, at least for me.
    • 'ZBrush'... A new addition to 'Media'; a highly professional yet also immensely expensive 3D editor; comparable to things I understand like Ableton Live or Komplete. My gf is a semi-professional 3D artist, my PC has backup copies of some of her software (and we do share an interest in each others hobbies / passions). ZBrush is "different".
    • None of the screenshot here are / were Photoshopped! 🤔 After a re-install of Gimp I got upset and annoyed with several changes that never manifested themselves with upgrades, but once you did a clean install.. good luck finding your options again. This seriously annoyed me (especially because I had to get some work done) and as a result I moved from Gimp to Photoshop Elements. Yes, it's payware but... "you get what you pay for" still holds true today. In my example it means having a consistent editor which doesn't change on a whim.
      • Open source is an awesome and impressive movement, don't get me wrong here. But some of its semantics are not healthy if all you want is to get some work done yet you didn't keep up a month or so... then Open Source can fall flat on its face (but then again, so can Windows 10, sorta)... anyway.. I Photoshop now ;)
    • My Reason icon now lights up in 'Media'. I dumped Reason 10 and moved to 11, then Windows updated and all of a sudden I have a "shining" icon. As much as I love Windows 10 I'll be the first to state that this is kinda stupid. Reason 11 otoh is pretty awesome though!
    And that's roughly it ;) There could be the secret of my start menus but.. if I am correct and I didn't forget that I addressed this in my first post already then I'll share this weekend. For now I need to get the heck into bed :eek:
    607 and Joy_the_Miner like this.
  20. I'm not professional myself, but that does not sound like a contrast to me. o.(o)
    I didn't know you did graphical stuff, that is interesting!
    I'm surprised to hear that you moved from GIMP, but your reasoning sounds solid.
    ShelLuser likes this.