After months of waiting and temporary appearances, the Start Menu redesign is now official on Windows 10. Today Microsoft has officially started rolling it out to the testers in the Windows Insider program.
Start Menu is not getting a radical overhaul, but it looks like Microsoft is finally addressing the consistency issues in the operating system by allowing the Start menu to blend in with the new icons and other aesthetic changes the company has brought to the OS.
The Live Tiles are still around for now but the background of the tiles will now match your choice of light or dark theme. The new Start Menu looks different from the current Start Menu in terms of colour accent treatment and blocks transparency. We have seen this before in Microsoft’s own teasers posted to Facebook, Mixer and Twitter.
Microsoft noted that this new change removes the solid colour backplates for a translucent background. It looks fresh and more consistent, thanks to the visual effect of Microsoft’s Fluent Design.
The new Start Menu makeover applies a uniform and partially transparent backgrounds to the frame. It also replaces the jarring blocks of colour that you’ve on your Live Tiles in Windows 10’s May 2020 Update or older.
You can make the most out of the redesign by turning on “Show accent color on the following surfaces” option for “Start, taskbar, and action center” in Settings > Personalization > Color.
When you turn on this option, Windows 10 will apply your accent colour (system-wide colour) to the Start menu’s backgrounds and the tiles.
As you can see in the above screenshot, Microsoft has also tweaked the recent apps list to drop solid colour backgrounds and bring it in with the overall redesign.
The new Start menu is certainly an improvement and it will be added to the production builds of Windows 10 next year.
