The Start menu comes with a completely new look in Windows 10 and borrows live tiles from the Windows 8 Start screen, as Microsoft tried to make it not only look better and feel fresh, but also to be more effective by providing users with info without the need for launching apps.
And yet, some of the features that have been implemented by Microsoft to overhaul the Start menu not necessarily slow it down, but they certainly make it feel this way, so turning them off could actually be the best way to turn everything blazing fast in Windows 10.
So today, we’ll show you three different ways to speed up the Windows 10 Start menu with just a few clicks, so you won’t lose more than a couple of minutes to set it up.
#1 – Disable Start menu animations
First and foremost, the animations that Microsoft introduced in Windows 10 make the Start menu feel somewhat slower, simply because before actually opening the Start menu, the operating system needs to render this animation.
So disabling these animations is the way to go. Unfortunately, these visual effects are OS dependent, which means that once you turn them off, you disable all animations in Windows 10. And yet, if you’re ready to make this compromise, go over to the next path and disable the option that says “Play animations in Windows.”
Settings > Ease of Access > Other options > Play animations in Windows
#2 – Disable web search in the Start menu
Whenever you start typing in the Start menu, Windows 10 triggers the same behavior as in Windows 8.1, so it launches the search feature and looks for information both online and offline as you type.
Obviously, searching the web could take a second or two, depending on your Internet connection, so turning this feature off could come in handy.
To do that, click on the search icon in your taskbar, hit the settings icon in the left menu and disable the feature reading “Search online and include web results.” This also helps protect your privacy, as you can read below the option, because Microsoft collects some information to improve its services.
#3 – Choose indexing options
The search feature comes with another option that could slow down the Start menu when searching. By default, the search feature integrated into Windows 10 indexes all files on your PC, so imagine that when you perform a search, it looks on your entire hard drive and online to find your results.
If you don’t want to search specific folders or drives on your PC, click the Start menu and type “Indexing options.”
Here you are allowed to choose which folders you want to be indexed and which not. Hit the modify button at the bottom of the screen and pick the locations you want to index.
Bonus tip – Remove live tiles
We’ve received tips from our readers saying that in some cases, the live tiles could also contribute to this somewhat slowed down Start menu feeling, so in order to get rid of this, simply remove all the tiles.
Basically, this should also help those who still prefer the Windows 7 layout, as a Start menu without live tiles looks not only cleaner, but also more familiar for those upgrading from Windows 7.