Setting Up an Alternative Start Menu – Windows 10

You have some options when using your Start menu on Windows 10. Here are a few ways to alter the appearance or the way you use your Start menu.  

The Windows 10 Start menu can be a little overwhelming at first, especially if you are just transitioning to Windows 10 from an earlier version. Even if you are comfortable with the current layout of the Windows 10 Start menu, you might be surprised to discover that there are a variety of ways you can alter your experience with the Start menu – and none of them are difficult to implement.

Windows 10 Start Menu – Your Options

1. Right-click the Windows icon at the bottom left of the screen.

Normally, you would left-click the Windows icon – where the Start button used to be on older versions of Window – to access your options in the Start menu. But you can get an alternate view of those options by right-clicking, so try it out. Instead of a bunch of images and text, you get a plain text list of things that you can do with your computer.

You can do things like:

• Shut down or sign out
• Open the Run prompt
• Access Task Manager
• Access the Control Panel
• Find Programs and Features
• And much more…

2. Change the size of the Start menu.

If you don’t like the size of your Start menu when you left-click the Windows icon, you can change the size of it. All you need to do is open the menu and drag either the right edge or the top to make the window smaller or larger.

3. Change the color of the Start menu.

You can change color just because you want something different or specific, or you can change it to help you see the options on the Start menu better. Just take control of the color by going from the Start menu into Settings. Then, you can choose Personalization and then choose Colors. Or, to speed things up, you could just click the Windows icon at the bottom left of the screen, then typing Personalization into the Search bar.

In addition to changing the color, you can also change the transparency of the Start menu. You can turn off Transparency effects to make the Start menu appear more solid.

4. Make the Start menu full-screen.

You may really like the way the Start menu looks, or you may prefer to use the Live Tiles to do most of your navigating. If you have used a Microsoft table, you will be familiar with Live Tiles – the tiles you see to the right of the text options when you open up the Start menu. Windows attempts to put all the things you need most in your Tiles selection, but you can also customize them to include different tiles as you see fit.

To make the Start menu full-screen, just go from Start to Settings. Choose Personalization and then choose Start. Now you can pick the Use Start full screen option.