Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users. After testing these briefly with Windows Insiders earlier this month, Microsoft has started to distribute update KB5036980 to Windows 11 users this week, which includes “recommendations” for apps from the Microsoft Store in the Start menu.
Luckily you can disable these ads, or “recommendations” as Microsoft calls them. If you’ve installed the latest KB5036980 update then head into Settings > Personalization > Start and turn off the toggle for “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more.” While KB5036980 is optional right now, Microsoft will push this to all Windows 11 machines in the coming weeks.
Microsoft’s move to enable ads in the Windows 11 Start menu follows similar promotional spots in the Windows 10 lock screen and Start menu. Microsoft also started testing ads inside the File Explorer of Windows 11 last year before disabling the experiment and saying the test was “not intended to be published externally.” Hopefully that experiment remains very much an experiment.
laughs with Atlas OS
Do Win 10 LTSC users still get shoveled this shit? I’m asking for a friend.
I haven’t gotten shoveled this shit for the entire course of my install, which has been since win 10 came out
I just can’t stand the lack of hibernation or hybrid suspend on laptops with Linux. Otherwise I’d much rather have a Linux distro on my nice laptop and windows in a VM if at all.
I’m on 10 still. (And if I wasn’t a gamer and sucker for games that don’t work on Linux - I would be on Arch)
Hopefully somebody will figure out how to murder the “feature.”
Think I will try Linux for real now
Enterprise editions exist, just saying…
I installed PopOS this week. Let’s see if my experiment works better than this experiment from Microsoft.
I got my first notification on my Win10 Pro box today about support ending too
“All you have to do is set some flags in GPO policy editor and relogin the first time and every time there’s an update. Easy”
- some Windows fanboi probably
dude istg i see windows users coping harder than linux users.
It’s kind of sad.
The post literally tells you that the option to turn it off is in the settings menu at: Settings > Personalization > Start Menu > “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more "
It’s not good, but it’s way better than you are making it out to be.
yeah and they also made an online account, optional.
Good thing it’s still optional.
Did I miss something about online accounts being required? I don’t remember hearing about that.
At least until Microsoft decides to hide it deeper, like they do with all of their most useful options. Nothing like navigating fifteen layers deep into your settings just to change something basic.
Hopefully WinToys will have an update with this option, so it won’t matter where Microsoft decides to move it this week.
And they called Google scroogle😆
Win11: less functionality, more ads
And what’s with the weasel words like “recommended”? Just call them “sponsored” or “ads”, like they really are.
If I could get easy to access, judgement free tech support for Linux then I’d be fine. I just don’t know how to solve my problems in Linux especially considering there are so many additional variables and often you either don’t get answers, are asking in the wrong place, or are asking in the wrong way. A lot of the time you just get scorn for not being born a Linux power user.
I do feel like I have basically no choice but to switch once W10 runs its course. I’ve got a dual boot of Fedora 40 KDE that I’m toying with.
honestly, i love helping people with linux, so you can just pm me either here, on discord or on matrix and ill reply as soon as i can
My current woes relate to choosing a distro (Fedora 40 KDE) that is compatible with secure boot, for simplicity of dual booting, only to find that the DisplayLink driver that I need to run my screens is not signed. Therefore I either have to switch off Secure Boot anyway, or manually re-sign it after every kernal update with some convoluted series of terminal commands… which I will not be doing.
That and there not being an equivalent of the CRU configuration tool that lets me tweak my Freesync monitor’s ranges to stop intolerable brightness flickering.
Finding that none of the useful AMD Software settings like Fluid Motion Frames or Anti-Lag are supported is also a random pain.
Every attempt I go for, I generally find roadblock after roadblock until I give up because I have too limited a lifespan to spend it bouncing between forum pages tangentially related to my issue.
Fundamental error - as usual with Windows news.
These ‘Start Menu Ads’ aren’t rolling out to everyone, I have zero ‘Start Menu Ads’. In fact, I have Zero Ads in my operating system.
Why must Windows news always assume that everyone runs Windows? Isn’t this the main bug with all operating systems?
I really, really wish Linux worked better on my gaming laptop. I used it for many years on desktop as my only OS (hopped many distros and ended back on mint) but on laptops I just can’t find a distro without considerable issues. Whether it be display scaling problems, performance, not being able to switch my video card mode, etc…
