It's not possible in Windows to do that automatically (unless you create a database of thousands upon thousands of different applications and what category they would fit it - and maintain it over the years - which is just nuts ehehe).

This is why we had (and still have, it still works for the NextSTART Programs sub-menu) the Winstep Start Menu Organizer and the ability to categorize applications into tabs in a shelf.

An alternative tab type - perhaps worth adding as well? - could be a "Programs" tab (vs the "All Programs" tab discussed above where everything is pilled up into a single tab like in the Windows 11 Start Menu) where the folder categorization is retained and the application folders open as Grid Stacks.

One is more organized, the other is faster to find the exact app you want simply by typing its name.

... and done! This one was a breeze to add.

Think about it: a Grid Stack of the "Programs" type can be used as a replacement to the Windows Start Menu, showing the items as icons instead of menu items. You can even invoke such a Grid Stack from NextSTART.

For now I am showing items in the same order as shown in the "Programs" sub-menu of the main NextSTART menu (i.e. UWP Apps folder first, sorted folders second, sorted items third) but I am not sure if I will keep it that way since there are other alternatives:

1. Everything including folders sorted alphabetically (i.e. folders mixed with items) instead of folders first then items (in which case there is also the option of separating letter groups with named separators*, although this will potentially add 26 extra items to the tab)

2. Insert all the UWP Apps directly into the tab instead of segregating them into a Apps folder you have to click on to open.


* named separators: essentially blank separator items that display a small letter icon, used to separate the alphabetically sorted groups.

Certainly is. Just shows again exactly how crap Windows really is.

1. Not a good plan AFAIC, mixing items with folders.
2. Not a good mix either.

Although of course I suppose with a plain vanilla 'programs' tab named separators wouldn't make sense?

Nope.

In which case I will use them only on the "All Programs" tab type (the one that will have no folders and will actually look like the current Windows Start Menu where all Start Menu items are grouped alphabetically)

Yeah, makes sense that way.

Won't be using that myself though. For one thing, no UWP apps here anyway, for another, got a nice little Nextstart Start Menu of my own. (Just the few apps I still use in a separate folder, and a few other items.

A few advantages to showing All Programs on a shelf or grid stack:

1. Icons instead of text, easier to spot what you are looking for.

2. You can Search it simply by beginning to type the first few letters of the application you are looking for. And, if you remember, what this does is instantly "filter out" what does not match the search, so highly effective.

3. If you create a Grid Stack for this, you can invoke it from the Quick Launch section of the NextSTART taskbar. A good alternative to the main NextSTART menu, and actually pretty similar to the modern Windows Start Menu.

4. Searching it doesn't show any web nonsense

Ok, so here is the (almost) final result (still not happy with how the letter separators "stand out").

But there is another problem, a bit more serious:

Most items in the All Programs part of the Start Menu live inside folders, and these folders many times hold more than one item... for instance, the Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 folder in the Start Menu has a bunch of different shortcuts, e.g. ; API Text Viewer, Books Online, Read Me, etc...

These related shortcuts are kept "together" because they live inside the same "Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0" folder. The "All Programs" panel in the Windows 11 Start Menu , although listing applications in alphabetical order, does not get rid of the folder structure in most cases, it will show a "Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0" folder in the letter M section and you can expand that folder to show the different shortcuts below it.

That is not how the "All Programs" tab type works, because I want to take advantage of the shelf's built-in Search/Filter feature. The "All Programs" tab type currently scans all folders and sub-folders, extracting the shortcuts but discarding the folders, and then sorts the shortcuts alphabetically.

This is great if you are searching for something because it will show you what you are searching for even if it was buried deep in a Start Menu folder. The MAJOR drawback? Related files with different names get scattered all over the place. For instance, in the above VB example, API Text Viewer goes to the letter A section, Books Online to the letter B section, and so on, instead of being kept together.

Another issue is that if you have several files with the same name (e.g. ReadMe.txt) but for different applications, they all get bunched up together with no way of knowing which file belongs to which application (although this one is actually quite easy to solve, I can show the original folder name in the balloon tooltip).

What about using shell:appsfolder instead? I know it's not a regular folder but a shell object, but fixes problems you've listed and also includes UWP/WinUI apps, which Start Menu Programs folder may not necessarily include.

Another suggestion would be to exclude showing files that are not *.lnk files, but some apps tend to add more than a single shortcut file to folders there.

Ah-ah, thanks for the suggestion, but you haven't been paying attention. A few posts back I wrote:





I also include all installed UWP Apps in the All Programs tab type (I merge the contents of a Apps tab type with the contents of the Start Menu Programs folder). In fact, you can see some of them (e.g. Calc, Clock, etc) in the screenshot in the post above.

This method also solves all the problems I mentioned above with Shell:AppsFolder AND it also works under Windows 7 (is anybody still using that? lol)



I could exclude document files, yes, but I am not sure if that would not be a worse solution than having document files "scattered"...

As mentioned, wasn't happy with those so I made the index letters much more visible, white letters on a red badge (want to keep them relatively small so as not to "visually merge" with the other icons - perhaps they should be even a tad smaller? Or maybe move them again to the top right corner of the separator icon, so there is more perceived blank space between letter sections):

Ah my bad, thanks for response anyway.