You can see the difference in the image below with the solid colour (left) and the regular colour (right).Īs in Windows 8, the tiles in Windows 10 can be set to display information from an app (Live Tiles). If you prefer to have solid colours, toggle the ‘Make Start, taskbar and action centre transparent’ option. The Start menu and other Windows 10 elements, such as the Action Centre, have transparency effects turned on by default. If you want the colour to fill the entire Start menu, rather than leaving the default dark background, and other elements of the operating system, such as the Taskbar, scroll down to the toggle labelled ‘Show colour on Start, taskbar and action centre’ and turn this on. Select the one you like and this will automatically change the accent colour, which, as the thumbnail image shows, is used for Live tiles and for highlights in windows.

Here you’re presented with a colour picker. Navigate to the Personalisation part of the Settings application and select Colours. This includes choosing the colour of the menu and whether or not you want it to be transparent. Windows 10 gives you bountiful options when it comes to choosing the look and feel of your Start menu. Turn off show most used apps and you won’t get any more prompts.Ĭhange the Start menu’s colours and transparency If you don’t see one but want to stop them appearing in the future, open the Start menu, click Personalisation and click Start. The suggestions only appear occasionally, and if you happen to catch one, you can simply right-click it and choose the option to turn suggestions off. If you don’t want to be bombarded with this kind of information, it’s easy enough to turn off. Note that there’s no option to put the Start menu back to its original size, although it’s easy enough to resize it manually to roughly the same position.Ī recent Windows 10 update added the suggested apps feature to your Start menu, prompting to download apps from the Store that Microsoft thinks that you might be interested in. You can resize both vertically and horizontally to get it how you want. If you don’t want to have the Start menu dominate your entire screen, and want it bigger or smaller than the regular version, you can resize it by clicking and dragging from the top and sides, just like you’re resizing a Windows File Explorer window. The full-screen Start menu doesn’t have a Settings link in it, but use the Cortana search bar to search for ‘settings’ and select the application from the search results. To revert to the standard Start menu, you can just reverse the instructions above. Now, when you click the Start menu or hit the Windows key your Start menu will appear full-screen, but you’ll notice that it’s not as intrusive or as horrible as the Windows 8 version. This will give you a screen with a lot of different toggles for the Start menu the one you want to switch to on is, Use Start full screen. From the Settings menu, select Personalisation and then select Start from the list on the left. To turn on the full-screen menu, click on the Start menu and click Settings. If this sounds like madness to you, you might want to give it a go the way the Windows 10 menu appears and is used is much less intrusive and slow than the Windows 8 version. If you prefer Windows 8’s full-screen Start menu, you can turn this back on in Windows 10. Here’s everything you can do to customise it to work the way you want it.įind out how to use all of the new Windows 10 features Make the Start menu full screenīy default, tiles live side-by-side with your programs list, giving you almost the best of both worlds. While the Windows 10 menu will work well for most people, you don’t have to put up with the default settings. We have to say, though, that the Start screen did have some good things about it, which is why we’re pleased to see Live Tiles integrated with a more traditional menu, as with Windows 7. One of the worst things about Windows 8 was that it ditched the Start menu entirely, replacing it with the much-maligned Start screen.

Screen start menu windows 10