Windows
Revamp the Start Menu with Open Shell
Since bringing back the Start menu with Windows 10, Microsoft has tweaked and updated its app launcher numerous times. But if it still doesn’t quite hit the spot for you – and if you really miss the old-style Start menu – there is an alternative in the form of Open Shell.
This free app brings back the pre-Windows 7 Start menu, giving some retro flavor to your PC. Open Shell gives you lots of different styles to play with, includes several different Start button options, and can even tweak other elements like the taskbar. It spun off from Classic Shell, which ceased development in late 2017. You can still download Classic Shell, but it is better to stick with Open Shell since it is actively updated by a team of developers.
Settings are organised into two rows of tabs at the top of the program, each containing myriad options to tweak and tune (make sure you click “Show all settings” to display extra tabs). If you’re not sure where to find a setting, there’s a built-in search box as well. With so many settings available, Open Shell is a great way to add visual flair to your Start menu.
1. Download and install
Open Shell is hosted on GitHub, a repository of code and various apps and tools. Go to the project’s home page at https://github. com/Open-Shell/Open-ShellMenu, scroll down to the “Download” section, then click the download button. On the next page, click the EXE file in the
“Assets” section to download the installer. Once you’ve done that, run the installer file and follow the on-screen instructions to install Open Shell.
Upon clicking the Start menu, you’ll notice it has automatically changed to the old-style menu. Gone are the Live Tiles, replaced by a much more compact menu reminiscent of the days of Windows 7 and before. If at any time you want to temporarily switch back to the Windows 10 Start menu, click “Start Menu (Windows)” at the top of Open Shell’s Start menu. If you are happy with things as they are, there is no more you need to do. However, Open Shell has a lot of customisation tricks up its sleeve.
2. Set a Start menu style
In the Windows 10 search box, type “Open-Shell Menu Settings” (the hyphen is important) and click the top result. This will open on the Open Shell settings manager, with the “Start Menu Style” tab open and the “Windows 7 style” option chosen by default. Click either “Classic style” or “Classic with two columns” to try a different look [Image A]. Your changes will be applied.
As well as the menu itself, you can also alter the appearance of the Start button. You can change it to the Open Shell logo, the classic Start button (with text and the Open Shell logo), or a custom design of your choice. If you want to use the third option, click “Custom,” then click “Pick image…” and locate the file you want to replace the Start button with (transparent PNG image files work best).
3. Advanced appearance controls
One of Open Shell’s main strengths is its ability to let you get really stuck in. The app gives you deep controls over the appearance of various elements, such as the Windows 10 search box, icon sizes, and more.
In the Open-Shell Menu Settings window, click the “Skin” tab. The default option in the drop-down menu is “Metro,” mirroring Microsoft’s design language of the same name. Other options include “Classic Skin,” “Metallic,” “Midnight,” “Windows 8,” and “Windows Aero” [Image B]. You can also remove the skin styling entirely by clicking “
Next, click the “Menu Look” tab. Here, you can tweak settings in detail. There are options for changing the sizes of small and large icons, adjusting the Start menu’s animation when you click the Start button, whether font smoothing is used, sub-menu scrolling speed, plus more.
If you want to add or remove a button from the Start menu, click the “Customise Start Menu” tab. Click the name of an item in the resulting list, and you can replace it with something else. Alternatively, you can click an entry in the “Display” column to change how it appears; choose between showing an item as a link, as a menu, or hiding it altogether.
>> In APC’s October issue we discussed how to change your
taskbar’s appearance with TaskbarX. Open Shell can implement similar visual changes to the taskbar. In the “Taskbar” tab there are options to toggle between an opaque, transparent, or glass-effect taskbar (like in TaskbarX). You can also change the taskbar’s opacity, colour, borders, and add a texture overlay.
4. Altering behaviors
Open Shell goes beyond the visual – it offers ways to change how elements of Windows 10 behave, too. In the Open Shell Menu Settings window, click the “Controls” tab. This tab governs what happens when you click the Start button, either with the left mouse button, right mouse button, or a combination of mouse and keyboard. For instance, Shiftclicking the Start button opens the standard Start menu instead of the Open Shell variant by default.
As for the behavior of the Start menu itself, that can be tweaked in the Main Menu tab [Image C]. This is useful if you want to hide the list of recently used programs, for example, or reverse the alphabetical sorting of apps. There are a lot of options in this tab, giving you a deep level of customisation that is not normally possible using the built-in tools in Windows 10.
Settings that alter how the search box on the Start menu behaves are (unsurprisingly) located in the “Search Box” tab. This provides a raft of deep-level settings at your fingertips. You can specify what you can search for and where Windows will look on your PC, toggle auto-complete on search queries, or hide the search box completely for a cleaner look. Note that this does not hide the search box on the taskbar, only the one on the Start menu.
Even the right-click menu gets its own group of settings in the “Context Menu” tab. This lets you remove certain options from the context menu – such as browsing to a program’s location in Windows Explorer – or hide the right-click menu entirely (this only affects Open Shell and does not disable the context menu elsewhere).
Fancy adding some audio effects to your Start menu? The “Sounds” tab lets you do this, enabling you to play sounds when you hover over the Start button, for example, or open a sub-menu. Finally, miscellaneous settings can be found in the “General Behavior” tab. For example, if you want to toggle whether newly installed apps are highlighted, or change the delay before tooltips.