The new App view in the Start menu - Windows 11 26200.5518

 In the last blog post I looked at how-to get your hands on the new Start menu layout in Windows 11 by utilising the Dev build from the Windows Insider Programme and then using the Vivetool to enable the feature.

Now lets take a look at the new view and what it has to offer.  The new view option allows you to view your entire app list on the same screen as your pinned apps.

The new menu now includes the category view, which if selected groups your apps automatically, these are:

• Productivity - Edge, Office etc
• Utilities & Tools - apps like phone link, and utilities like snipping tool, calculator
• Games - anything Xbox
• Creativity - camera and any creative apps like Clipchamp, photos and paint 
• Information & Reading - RSS readers, weather, news 
• Other - anything else it cant categorize!

To get the new view go to the highlighted view menu and choose Category.  These groups are categorised by AI, so at present you cannot change the names of the groups.

However this does give you an app view, like iOS somewhat, however if that is not your things you can change the view.

Here you can change the current view either by grid or the more traditional by list as you can see below:

Further customisations are available in the Settings app, giving you further granular control of the Windows 11 Start menu. Goto Settings  - Personalisation - Start to begin to customise the view.

These options allow you the user to get more control over the Start menu layout.  For me one option I have never used in the default Windows 11 menu is 'Recommended files', which is  normally located at the bottom half of the menu.   So as you can see I have turned it off and replaced it with the category view.

So as Windows 11 25H2 begins to take shape in the Windows Insider Programme, do you think a more customisable  Start menu is a good thing?   This new look is still in preview so expect things to change in future builds  as things evolve.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Training staff in busy times

 You know it was back in the days of Windows 3.11 and Office 95 that I first started training staff at our local council.  My how things have come along since then.  We used to photocopy screen shots on to acetate and use the traditional Overhead Project to project against the end wall in the training room!   

Over the years I have delivered more and more sessions and always thought about how much people retain once they have left the room.  I know teachers as soon as they get back to the classroom probably have forgot my name and the majority of the content!    To rectify this  we have developed a low cost training solution aimed a schools and business who are focused on the Microsoft toolset.

E-training is nothing new !

I have not reinvented the wheel in anyway however I think we can now effectively back up in person training for hard pressed staff members and also allow then to curate there own training at a super affordable price !  Lets take a quick spin and see:

Logging into the portal  either through the web or through our dedicated Microsoft Teams app, unlock some 190 + courses.

Every user gets access to the Microsoft 365 course ware library, plus extra additional training and well-being training to support people at work.    You can as customer easily add your own training here as well.

Training is bite sized video training, with the ability to include a quiz or exam at the end of the course to reinforce knowledge.   So if you are looking to get your staff trained on Microsoft Teams you can now easily leverage a hybrid approach with a mixture of onsite training followed on  by some refresher video training and even produce a course certificate at the end of the process.

Administrators get a dashboard to see progress on how staff are doing.

Administrators get a great dashboard overview of the business training deployment, and can also get scheduled training reports to monitor progress of staff.

Added to this you can also do the following:

• Add your own content 
• Use the inbuilt Policy Manager to send out and digitally acknowledge that staff have read them

To add your own content 

You can set users to become content creators for your organisation and therefore upload there own videos, and build them into a course which is then available for staff to use.   However we also offer a dedicated video creation team.

Working with the team from Mastercut Videos we can work with you to create your own curated content using the latest content delivery techniques utilising AI, that in turn makes content easier to update in the future.

How much does it cost?

To find out how much please drop me a line at kevin@s8it.co.uk, where we can let you have a free trial to investigate the great training content we provide.

Windows 11 Build 26200.5518 - unlock a fresh start menu

 There is some interesting stuff happening in the Windows Insider channel at the moment.  We have recently the Dev channel branch to Build 26200, and this brings the first look into Windows 25H2 or perhaps we would call Windows 12?

The Windows Start menu in  Windows 11 , appeared first in the extremely short lived Windows 10X as a simplified Start Menu allowing you to get you into your stuff quicker (not my words!). This features the area you could pin apps that you use regularly and a recommended section of the documents and things you were working on (your stuff), this moved away from the hybrid Start Menu with Live tiles which was a mix of Windows 7 and Windows 8 combined into Windows 10.

Microsoft has started looking at the Start Menu layout in the latest Dev build of Windows 11, and remember these channel builds are not guaranteed to make the final cut of Windows 11. So I though it would be a good moment to take a look at what is coming down the line!

To get the new Start Menu you need to be in the Dev Channel of Windows 11, though the Windows Insider option located in the Windows Update option in Settings.

You will need to join the Windows Insider Programme and then select the Dev channel to experience the new Start menu.   Once selected restart the device, and wait until Windows Update picks up the update, this will take you to build 26200.5518.

Once your machine has updated, login and you may or may not experience the new Start Menu, if you do you will something like :

The new look  Start Menu showing app-grouping.

A/B testing in the Windows Insider Programme has been around for a while, means although you download the feature it may not be enabled.  Therefore after going though the process you may not see the finished result.  If you don't see it you can enable the feature using the 3rd party Vivetool from Github.

Download here 

There are now two versions of Vivetool, one for ARM64 and one for Intel/ AMD so be sure to download the right one !   at the time of writing the version number is 0.34

Once installed right click on the zip file and choose to extract it to a location.  My tip here is to extract to a place like c:\vivetool

Once extracted launch an elevated command prompt window, and the navigate to c:\vivetool , or wherever you decided to extract it to!

Remember to open an elevated command prompt 

Now change directory to the location you have downloaded Vivtool  in my case its c:\vivetool

Now enable the new start menu by the following commands

vivetool /enable /id:49221331,47205210 vivetool /enable /id:48433719 vivetool /enable /id:49402389 vivetool /enable /id:55495322

Once you have completed this, and then restarted your computer the new Windows Start Menu will be available to you.  Look out for the next post about the new Start menu functions, also if you have a Copilot+PC there is also some updates coming to Windows Recall.

What are your thoughts on a somewhat iOS / Android look to the apps list?  Please leave a comment in the section below.