Microsoft has pending account with the Windows 11 start menu and seems to be trying to make up for it by taking inspiration from designs that are present in other operating systems instead of shaping its own innovations and bringing out its most creative side.

I already told you last July that the company was preparing an important change to the Start menu and that it would make it possible Group apps into categories. I also shared a preview of what this interface will look like thanks to a leaked image.

Now we have a new image shows this interface in more detailand I can say that in general Microsoft’s design is the same as we’ve had in iOS for years, grouping apps into squares where they’re integrated as smaller icons that show the content of each block.

On iOS, you can view icons up to nine applicationsand will appear in the Windows 11 Start menu up to seven three of them larger and four of much smaller size. Microsoft may give an option to change the configuration to show up to 16 icons per block, grouped into four small icons per place for a large icon, but I can’t confirm that.

Each block is labeled with a name depending on the applications it integrates. The first focuses on developer tools, the second on entertainment, the third on music, the fourth on navigation and maps, the fifth on weather and news, and the sixth is a generic category for “other apps”. Image shared by Windows Latest.

When will the new Start menu arrive in Windows 11

Leaving aside the issue of similarity with iOS, the truth is that this change that the new start menu will contain seems quite appropriate to me, because it allows better use of space and reduces the amount of vertical scrolling we have to do to find different apps.

On the other hand, organizing them by categories can help us find the application we are looking for. even faster than an alphabetical list. The interface is also very visual and intuitive and is quite clean and tidy.

We don’t have a release date yet, but this new start menu is currently on the insider channel, so it might be one of the new features included in the Windwos 11 24H2 update, which is scheduled to launch in the last quarter of this year. same year, probably between months October and November.