Microsoft starts displaying suggestions in the Start menu

Sep 25, 2015 09:33 GMT  ·  By

The Start menu has been greatly improved in Windows 10, so it provides you with a quick way to access your apps and settings, recently-opened documents, live tiles and power controls, but at the same time, it’s also used by Microsoft to provide you with app recommendations.

Most people are calling these app suggestions “ads” and they do have a point: they are actually links to apps in the store that, when clicked, get you to download page.

Recently, some users have started seeing these ads in Windows 10 build 10547, and obviously, many are pretty disappointed with Microsoft showing some content in their Start menus.

Fortunately, there’s an option to disable that, but there’s one important thing that everyone should have in mind. Some PCs might not display any app recommendations at all, which is pretty odd, while others are invaded with these suggestions, so it’s yet unknown how exactly Microsoft chooses which PCs to display ads on.

There is a setting for that

Another weird thing is that the option to show suggestions in the Start menu is enabled by default, which is clearly unexpected after Microsoft’s Windows 10 privacy scandal that made so many users accuse the company of trying to spy on them and steal your data.

To disable it, you need to go to:

Settings > Personalization > Start > Occasionally show suggestions in Start

And disable this feature. As you can see, the word occasionally is rather vague, so you don’t know for sure how often these ads are actually showing up in your Start menu.

Interestingly, this option isn’t available in all Windows 10 builds, but it exists in 10547, which could be a sign that Microsoft’s experiment for the time being and nothing is decided for now. It remains to be seen if the same suggestions are being displayed on the RTM version too.

This is where the new option resides
This is where the new option resides

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Suggestions displayed in the Start menu
This is where the new option resides
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