Microsoft changes Windows 11’s Start menu for the better (gasp) while introducing nifty new file sharing options

• Windows 11 has a new preview build with some smart additions
• One of those is a fresh piece of the interface to make file sharing easier
• The other is a couple of neat new layouts for one part of the Start menu

Windows 11 should be getting some useful changes to its interface, one of which makes sharing files easier, and the other introduces nifty new layout options for the Start menu.

These moves are in testing right now, to be precise in Windows 11’s build 22635.4950 which is in the Beta channel.

The new file sharing menu appears at the top of the screen whenever you’re dragging a file out of a folder on the desktop, and it features an array of icons, such as WhatsApp, My Phone, Microsoft Teams, and so on. Dropping a file on any icon will instantly share it via that medium.

As for the Start menu, that change is for the ‘All apps’ page which as the name suggests lists all your apps, with the new options here being the grid and category views.

The grid view sticks to an alphabetical ordering of your apps, as in the standard list view, except with the grid layout, you can fit more apps on with the layout extended out to the side, so there’s less scrolling to do (see the image below).

Or a more different alternative is the category view where your apps are grouped into various categories and ordered by usage levels. So, for example, there are social apps, or productivity, or entertainment apps, a whole bunch of categories you can dive into, with your most-used apps highlighted in a box featuring their icons (again, see the pic below).

This feature is still rolling out, so not every tester will see it yet (and it’s coming to the Dev builds, as well as the Beta channel).

That’s pretty much it for this preview build, although there’s one more addition on the accessibility front with File Explorer which is being graced with improved support for text size scaling with File Open or Save dialog boxes (and also with Wizard dialog boxes).

Oh, and Microsoft has applied a number of bug fixes too, while there are some acknowledged issues, which are all listed in the usual blog post outlining the content of build 22635.4950.

Analysis: Almost through testing now

Of course, all this is just in testing, and if trialling any given element doesn’t work out, that feature may be dropped. I’d imagine that’s unlikely, though, as both these fresh introductions are useful and welcome touches.

Easier file sharing has got to be good, and I can’t see anyone arguing with more choice in the Start menu layouts. After all, if you don’t want to have the ‘All apps’ panel look any different to the default list, you don’t need to go near the alternatives.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that having reached the Beta channel, these features are not far from release now. There’s only one more step – final testing in the Release Preview channel – before this functionality is ready to be deployed to the finished version of Windows 11.

Indeed, the move with the Start menu layouts was previously discovered by digging around in test builds in the past, so it’s good to see that coming to fruition (the above mentioned caveats taken into consideration).

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