Microsoft gradually improves the Windows 11 shell, and makes it more convenient and effective. One of the recent additions in this area is the ability to drag icons from the pinned section of the Start menu to the taskbar. It is new to build 22635.3785 (Beta), so if you are a Beta channel insider, you can try it right away.
The feature is generally available and doesn't require you to activate anything hidden, tweak the Registry, or so. Here's how it works.
Finally, the official announcement now mentions this new feature.
[ADDED] 6/17] You can now also pin apps from the Start menu to the taskbar or the desktop by dragging and dropping items directly to taskbar or desktop from the Start menu.
Besides, Microsoft continues their work on the new Start menu layout for the All apps view. As you may remember, the company's intent is to replace the list of apps with Android-like grid of shortcuts. It is still a work in progress, but in build 22635.3785 the new view finally properly implements folders. They expand down when you click a folder and shows the contained shortcuts.
The following video shows the change in action.
As said above, this is a hidden feature, so you need to activate it manually.
Enable the new All apps view in Start
- Download the ViVeTool utility from its GitHub page.
- Unpack all the files from the downloaded archive to the c:\vivetool folder.
- Press Win+X and select Terminal (Admin) from the menu.
- Type the following commands one by one, and press Enter after each of them:
c:\vivetool\vivetool /enable /id:48433719
c:\vivetool\vivetool /enable /id:47205210 /variant:2
- Restart your computer, open the Start menu, and click All apps to see the change.
To undo the feature enablement, substitute /enable with /disable in each of the commands and run them again.
Thanks to @PhantomOfEarth for sharing their findings.
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