That option you point to merely stops the synchronizing of pinned items in Windows default start menu with Start11's start menu, and isn't the issue here.
In any case, I think I've figured it all out. There is an option called "Pin to Start" in the Windows 11 context menu:
This option pins the thing you've selected to the "real" windows start menu. Having that "Synchronize pinned items from the OS menu with Start11" option is required to be enabled for these pinned items to show up in Start11. They show up in the bottom "Pinned" section:
However, the issue arises when clicking "Show more options":
Which shows the "classic" windows context menu. On my system, I have a simple registry tweak that goes directly to this menu and bypasses the above menu. This menu shows both "Pin to Start" and "Pin to Start11":
The "Pin to Start" option in here does the same thing as in the "new" context menu, which is that it pins the item to the "real" windows start menu, and start11 sees that and synchronizes that.
The "Pin to Start11" option adds items to the top "Pinned" section:
When I first started using Start11, I figured I could remove the top "Pinned" section as it was empty. But then I ran into the issue I described in my very first post in this thread, which is that no matter what I did, I could not see the items I pinned. This is because I was choosing "Pin to Start11", and those items were being placed in the (no longer there, because I deleted it) top "Pinned" section. When I switched to a different start menu style, I was able to see the items I had previously pinned, as both pinned sections existed:
Making matters worse, I use a Windows Explorer replacement called Directory Opus, which, due to a limitation in Windows, cannot display the "Pin to Start" item mentioned above in the context menu. My context menu only contained "Pin to Start11", and not "Pin to Start". However, this isn't necessarily a problem with Directory Opus.
The issue I think is two things:
1) (minor) Since I deleted that Pinned section, "Pin to Start11" was never going to show me anything in the start menu. Additionally, there was no way to get that section back other than to completely reset Start11 to defaults. In fact, there's no way to add back either Pinned section once they're deleted.
2) (major) Why are there two Pinned sections in the first place? It makes for a confusing experience for the user. This problem seems to plague every style available, except for:
- Windows 10 Style
- Modern Style
- Windows 7 Style
Could Start11 combine these two Pinned sections into one? Perhaps it could keep track of the synchronized items from the "real" start menu alongside the user-added items? The "Windows 10 Style" is the only one that seems to do this correctly.
I'm not really sure whether to call this a bug or just something that hasn't been fully developed yet. Either way, I hope this information helps out the developers and they can sort out this duplicate "Pinned" issue.
For now, it seems the solution (for me) is to remove the "real" synchronized "Pinned" section and just keep the one influenced by the "Pin to Start11" option. Hopefully this information helps.
