Windows · Reviewed

Start menu shows ads

Raised by 180 people over 18 years (2009–2026), in 13 of them.

What people report

2016-02
If I grab my drill, it's because I want to make a hole. I don't want to click through even one annoyance.
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2021-09
inconsistent UI, and adverts and notifications/nags blasting at you from every place they could fit one in
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2023-05
a product that constantly pushes for things i dont want, doesn't respect my privacy, runs ads on my desktop and looks horrible
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2025-06
Time and again they keep changing the default browser, throwing ads into Start Menu, blocking specific applications
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2026-11
the menu has glaring issues (half of it is basically an ad for cloud storage)
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Principle

User control and freedom

People report promoted apps and ads filling the Start menu and other system surfaces they regard as their own, with no simple way to turn them off, and some promotions looking like real system alerts.

A fix

Keep the Start menu limited to user-installed and user-pinned items by default, and make any suggestions opt-in through a single, easy-to-find setting. Visually separate promotional content from system notifications, and never pre-install promoted apps that need PowerShell to remove.

Grouping, principle and fix drafted with Claude and reviewed by Justusability. Counts are people whose comment Claude labelled a usability complaint about this issue; see Method for how, and its limits. Something wrong here?

All 192 source comments