Hacker News Reader

Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

I agree that start menu search was great in Windows 7. However, it is totally broken in Windows 10. Results are unpredictable unless you finish typing out the complete and correct name of exactly what you're searching for. There are a bunch of things in the start menu that it just can't find at all. Worst of all, it's always trying to send me to Bing or the Windows Store. I just want to search the menu!

View on HN

Or it updates after a few key presses, right before I hit enter and focuses on another result!

This happens entirely too often for me, and the other result that ends up being focused on is "<x> \n See web results".

I've never wanted to search for anything on the web from my start menu, and to make matters worse, it always performs the search using the IE/Edge browser and Bing as the search engine. To date, I've yet to see any way of customizing (or disabling) this behavior.

If I had a list of the "most annoying things my computer does", this would certainly be near the top.

It also sends your keystrokes outside, in order to get the "Search suggestions" as you type.

I have a firewall rule set up in Windows to disable outbound connections from Edge purely for this reason.

It’s bonkers how bad the Windows 10 start search is now. Even when I type in an app I use frequently, it tries to recommend a web search. I’ve given up and usually just use explorer to navigate program files and go to the app directly.

I long ago switched to Classic Start Menu (part of Classic Shell), and I love it. I have a hybrid of Win 98 and Win 7. Hit start, type the first few letters of the program, hit enter.

Launchy is really great as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com