Start11 - Right click on application, pin to start11, does not work

Are you right-clicking a shortcut for the app in the All Apps list, or directly on the .exe file in the Programs folder?

Doing so from the All Apps list does work, but is not my issue. In my case, I have various portable exe's that are in a folder outside of the usual Program Files folders. Right clicking them and choosing Pin to Start11 does not work.

I believe you can only pin shortcuts to the Start11 menu. Here's what I do with portable apps. I create a shortcut for each portable app I use and drag them to this folder "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs." This will display them in the All Apps list and they can be pinned from there. If you want, you could create a folder, say "Portable Apps," in this same system folder, and then drag all the shortcuts of your portable apps you created earlier into this folder. Now, there will be a folder in the All Apps list called Portable Apps which will contain all your portable apps.

that's a neat idea to create a folder in the start menu for portable apps. so what is the point of this right click menu item if it does nothing?

i believe also that the default windows start menu allows this behavior via a "Pin to Start" item in the right click menu, which Start11 replaces.

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. But, on my system, pin to Start11 work on portable application as it should. Refer to my short video below. Please show me how you doing it in a video and let us understand the issue better. Capture a video, upload it somewhere, such as Youtube and share its link here.

Thank you.
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

Sorry for my delay, but here you can see how choosing "Pin to Start11" does nothing.

https://youtu.be/RwMzTJYMsdA

Looking at your video, your right click menu look different than my stock Windows 11 explorer-> file right click menu. Did you somehow change Windows 11 default right click menu to something else? That might be the reason your Pin to Start11 don't work on your system.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

In your video, you click "More Options" at the bottom and then proceed to click on Start11. Mine is not a custom menu in any way, I have done a small registry tweak to skip straight to the "More Options" menu, as is described here: Disable "Show more options" context menu in Windows 11 Tutorial | Windows 11 Forum (elevenforum.com)

It shouldn't affect any of the functions within the menu.

I can't confirm or deny if that will or will not effect how the "Pin to Start11" work. However, I have forwarded your problem/question to Stardock Support Team for their assistance. Please keep an eye on this thread for any updates. We appreciate your feedback and patience.

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

And if you undo that tweak?

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

Same result with the tweak undone.

If you try with this on and off, does it change anything?

With it on, and choosing 'Pin to Start', does it also pin to Start11?

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

Hi samuryan89,

I've tested this while ensuring "Synchronize pinned items..." (as sdrohan has pictured above) is set to "On".

I recorded a video of this appearing to work normally, linked here: 

https://cdn.stardock.us/support/uploads/2024-09-11_11-17-36amcguinness.mp4

Note as in your reproduction steps, the .EXE application is located in the same path you're attempting to pin from.  The style setting for Start11 is also the same as yours.  

Best regards,

Adam McGuinness
Stardock Customer Support Specialist

ok, thank you for your patience, i had a chance to troubleshoot more. i tried the "Synchronize Pinned Items" option both on and off and found that it didn't change anything.

however, what i found was that changing to a different start menu style showed all the various pins i had tried before! some of my "Windows 11 Style" pinned items seem to be in one of the "New group" sections in the "Windows 10 Style", whereas the "Windows 10 Style" has what appears to be an unnamed group containing the items i've been trying to pin via the right click context menu. i took a screen recording showing the difference, as well as some screenshots of the two different menus.

https://youtu.be/Tznck3qIWQU4

i'm not really sure what went wrong here, but i'm going to assume one solution is probably to start from scratch by completely uninstalling and making sure to delete any configs/settings/data, and then reinstalling. is there anything that gets left behind when uninstalling that i should go and manually delete?

thanks.

I have exactly the same problem as you, did you find a solution? because I uninstalled the application as well as the settings and reinstalled Start11 v2 and I still have the same problem

Hello,
You can uninstall Start11, and select remove setting when uninstall. Once that is done. Run the purge and reinstall steps as mentioned here: https://forums.stardock.com/505872/start11-support-faq#reinstalling. Make sure to reboot after the purge and reboot again after the new install. Also best to re-download a new installer, just to make sure you have a good copy of installer.  

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. As you can see, the issue still ongoing. If you wish, you also could try out the steps mentioned above.

Thank you.
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

Sorry but don't work, only on Win10 Style work

Edit after Purge: 

Great, maybe, something is blocking it from working. Do you have any other 3rd party application installed that change how your Start penal/ taskbar/ Windows explorer work?

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

I have Nilsoft Shell for right clicking and Windhawk for slick windows arrangement, I tried to uninstall both but I still have the same problem

I can't say it these application do or don't effect how Start11 work. What you can do it setup a Windows Sandbox and test Start11 under it and see if the issue still there. If not while in there. That show something is blocking Start11 in your current setup.

https://forums.stardock.com/505872/start11-support-faq#windowssandbox

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Ok, I had some time to do a full uninstall, including the purge that was mentioned.

From the beginning, there are, for some reason, two "Pinned" sections in the "Windows 11 Style" menu. One contained a selection of apps that I must have pinned in the default Windows start menu. The other was blank:

When I pin an application from the right click menu, it shows up in the top "Pinned" section but not in the other. Why are there two separate ones? Should I delete the bottom one and re-pin those items into the top "Pinned" section?

and in contrast to the above results, if i search for an application in the start menu and then right click on it and choose "Pin to Start" or "Pin to Start Menu (Start11)", it puts it in the bottom "Pinned" section, instead of the top pinned section:

Try disable this option. Sign out and in again and test if there is any different behavior.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

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.

Not sure if this will actually work since you are using Directory Opus, but if you right click in the group where you want to add an app (or file, or folder) and then select "New>Pin installed application..." this will allow you to add to the group you wish very easily.