Pretty much in the title, the only time I interact with the windows key in its standard operating condition is getting pissed off that the start menu opened. I use it in other capacities such as taking screen shots and other key commands but I got to wondering if anyone, ever actually uses it to access the start menu.
Also if anyone comes here and posts “dOnT uSe wINdoWs,” you really are cute.
Edit: I am more curious if anyone actually gets utility out of its default behavior (opening the start menu). I am aware that it is used in a number of key commands (although some are new to me).
The real question is who uses the actual start menu, as in tiles and program list. I’ve only ever seen people type the program name
The Windows start menu is inexplicably a huge mess. Like all MS products, they cram their interface with as much as possible.
I preferred their nested menus to what is there now, though I started using search as soon as it became a thing (Windows 7?). They should have really implemented categories (like in Linux) early on rather than having every suite have it’s own sub-menu in the Start Menu.
You can do that yourself, since Chicago first debuted in ~1994.
I don’t want my OS categorizing stuff for me.
My start menu is categorized on the root (where “pinned” items go), and I leave the rest of the menu alone.
The maintainer of the application chooses the categorie(s) but manually organizing things as an end user… is kinda dumb. Maybe I don’t understand your workflow (or why the Start Menu is the way it is now with all programs barfed into one list, I figured it was for touch devices). It doesn’t really matter, though, because search is used primarily now, anyways. Forgetting the name of the application is the only reason I can see digging through the Start Menu now.
I prefer OpenShell, since it unfucks the start menu and makes it usable. It’s just like Win7 but easy to customize.
I only ever see the real start menu on other people’s computers. Openshell is like ublock, without it your face tends to contort and twist like you ate a lemon.
I use the tiles to “pin” programs that I use semi-regularly and can’t be bothered remembering the name of. Or that share an inconveniently long prefix with the name of another program. Or that I have multiple versions of installed, with a specific version I usually need.
I don’t like pinning such programs to the task bar because they add unnecessary clutter while not in use.
I imagine some legacy users who cut their teeth on Windows 95 or something and never changed their ways. I was a Mac user through the mid 2000s and switched back when I got my gaming rig with Windows 10 so I don’t remember when the search bar was implemented—never used the start menu since.