Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. The slow load only appear when you first open up your Start menu. The next time open it should be faster. The load time will depends on how many icons you have on it. And, if you have many that are using big image files as custom tiles/icons. What you can do, perhaps cut down the custom image size, make sure those files is in local drive etc.

Thank you,
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

That is not normal. Please try, uninstall Start11, reboot immediately (important), download latest version available in your account product download page: https://store.stardock.com/myaccount/products. Install it, reboot immediately again. Retest it and report back.

If it still happen. Need more information.

1. Windows 10 or 11? Also need its full version and OS Build number. Please use Winver.exe.
2. Start11 full version number.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Need this too.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

What you need is increased icon cache size

Registry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"MaxCachedIcons"="65535"

The value MaxCachedIcons is in KB. Default value is 500KB. I use many tabs with many icons thus my value is 64MB (65535). This is max possible value.

I use Start11 "folder as a tab" feature for easier tool link file management. Separate folders (and Start11 tabs) with Windows standard tools links, my programming tools links, administration tools links, etc.

Even with big icon cache size 64MB initial load take a few seconds. After that menu appears instatly. Sometimes menu is reloaded again despite no change in folders with links. I presume icon cache overflow, which triggers reload. I have no solution how to increase icon cache size beyond 64MB.

Any change in a folder with links triggers Start11 menu reload.