For years, Microsoft has been carefully toeing the line of including advertisements promotions inside of the Start menu, File Explorer, and Office applications. While some may argue that promoting your own products inside of your applications isn’t an advertisement, it’s certainly an annoyance - especially when you do not have the ability to permanently turn off these messages.
As I write this blog post in Word, there is a banner at the top asking me to download OneDrive, which I already have on my mobile device - this very file is even saved there as well! But, let’s not let the semantics of already using OneDrive - which Microsoft knows I am already using - stop them from telling me to use OneDrive.
But why stop at Word? Microsoft has already forced the “recommendation” section inside of the Start menu, and this month it has become apparent that they will continue to push more promotional material into the Start menu experience.
The latest flavor of “ads” that are showing up inside Windows 11 will appear in the shutdown menu. Take a look at the image below. Courtesy of Microsoft, you can see the different ways the company plans to incorporate its new messaging in a place that should not have any messaging at all.
Start11 removes these advertisements - or messaging, or whatever you want to call them - from your Windows 11 experience. While we didn’t build Start11 to be an adblocker, it’s becoming apparent that Microsoft has no plans of slowing down how they will inject corporate messaging into the OS.
So, how does Start11 work? It's pretty simple, actually. Once you install the utility, it replaces the default Windows Start menu with our own customizable version. This new Start menu not only offers a variety of different styles, but it also comes with a bunch of customization options that let you tweak it to the desired specification.
The best part about Start11 is that it completely removes ads from the Start menu. No more sponsored apps or suggested downloads - just a clean, ad-free experience that lets you focus on what's important: getting stuff done.
While we don’t know where the next advertisement in Windows 11 will show up, know that if you are running Start11, you won’t have to worry about it appearing in the Start menu.
You can learn more about Start11 here.
