Windows 11 Start menu uses a 15 MB JSON for categories

https://www.windowslatest.com/2025/07/03/windows-11-start-menu-uses-a-15mb-json-not-ai-to-organize-apps-under-categories/

by lcnmrn • 1 year ago

12 2 1 year ago

windowslatest.com

leakycap• 1 year ago

I like these changes, and I imagine from an IT admin & support perspective non-customizable Start Menu categories probably makes a lot of sense.

I'm glad Recommended can finally be hidden with this future update.

theGeatZhopa• 1 year ago

Nice find. I'm still under win 10. I think it's an exciting feature Microsoft dp present here. What's not so exciting is the reordering on usage of items (as said in the article). Then, if the apps are really shown in categories like in the article "without a caption text" - that's hurting my intelligence!

I'm not telling to keep everything like it is, but asking for leaving options not to reorder on usage (rather keep the order bc memorisation) and be more informative, at least.

Why is that JSON so big? Does it contain all the apps Microsoft have in store and the catalogue is then pushed to users? Can't imagine they do it like this. That in conclusion would mean, the article's shown screenshot of the JSON is a system of an archiver. May be.

I'm looking forward to modding it. It was always fun to sort things out and adapt the systems to me. In the end, it's just a bunch of config files.

Windows 11 Start menu uses a 15 MB JSON for categories

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