New Start Menu for Windows 10 21H1: How to Activate it

Although Windows 10 20H1 , the current version of the operating system, has arrived a little over a month ago, Microsoft is already working on the update for next 2021. There is still a long time ahead to know in detail what will be new with This new version, although Insider users are already having a first contact with one of the most relevant: the renewed start menu that will arrive in the operating system.

The start menu has been one of the most criticized elements since Windows 8. And, despite the fact that the start of Windows 7 was almost perfect, in Windows 8 the company decided to eliminate it, and in Windows 10 it brought back a different alternative and quite messy.

New Start Menu for Windows 10 21H1: How to Activate it

Little by little, Microsoft is improving this menu, both in functions and organization and in appearance. And, now, the company is working on giving you a Fluent Design based facelift, a necessary facelift that many will no doubt appreciate.

Features of the new start

The first thing to keep in mind is that this new change is not a massive update, but it is a necessary step towards the future. The main objective of this new start menu is to offer a much cleaner and more uniform interface than what we have now. Therefore, the tiles have been changed so that they all have the same color, as well as the same appearance for all of them. This color is automatically adjusted according to the theme, and if we have activated the light or dark theme.

Nuevo inicio Windows 10 21H1 Insider

In addition to removing Live Tiles backgrounds , Microsoft has also removed icon backgrounds from the list of installed programs on the left. Without a doubt, they were two of the ugliest items we could find in this start menu. Although there is still a lot of work ahead (for example, removing folders from the program list), the path you are taking is certainly not a bad one.

Fluent Design will be more present than ever in Windows 10 21H1, and this is just one more proof of it.

Activate it in Windows 10 21H1

To activate this new start menu, the first thing we must do is have the 20161 build of the operating system installed on the computer. This branch of development corresponds to 21H1, the first major update that we will see next year and, despite being in the early stages of development, we have already seen a lot of changes around this version. This version is only available to Insider users signed up for the Dev version of the operating system.

If we are already using this version, the next step will be to download the ViveTool tool, something that we can do from the following link . What this tool will allow us to do is force the activation of certain Windows 10 features that are disabled by default. Once downloaded, we unzip it in a directory where we have it at hand. Next we open a CMD window with Administrator permissions, and using the “CD” command we will place ourselves in that directory. In our case, for example, on the desktop.

Now we only have to run the following command, which will be the one that allows us to enable this feature.

ViVeTool.exe addconfig 23615618 2

vivetool ejecutar comando nuevo inicio

The “2” at the end indicates that we want this feature to be activated. If instead of a “2” we put a “1”, then the feature would be disabled. And, if we put a “0”, then the default value of it would be used.

Once the command is executed, we restart Windows 10 and that’s it. When it turns on again, we can open the start menu to see that it is indeed already activated. We remember that this start menu is only available for Windows 10 build 20161. If we are not Insider users, we will not be able to activate it yet, we will have to wait to be able to do it.