Microsoft recently faced a two-pronged attack from two of its former employees. One of them happens to be the former head of Windows UX who took a slightly sarcastic dig at Microsoft for showing ads and additional promotions through the Recommended section of the Start menu.

The other is also a former Windows engineer who labeled the performance of the Start menu as “comically bad” and wanted to draw the company’s attention to the seemingly “unfinished” overall state of Windows 11.

However, there is also a positive development. The Start menu in the newest beta version, 22635.3500 (KB5036985), launched earlier today introduces alphabetical grouping in the “All apps” option in the Windows 11 Start menu. This should make it much more convenient to navigate and find apps. It also seems a lot less busy.

And that’s in addition to the recently announced Microsoft Account Manager (MSA) feature added to the Start menu. The build also brings the ability to add a mailing address to MSA recovery.

This is what the new Start menu looks like with apps sorted by letter (courtesy of Windows Enthusiasts and X User PhantomOcean3):

This is not the first time in recent times that Microsoft has made a welcome change to the Windows 11 Start menu. Towards the end of last month, hidden in Beta build 22635.3420, it introduced the grid view for the All Apps section, which makes it much easier to quickly navigate or scroll through apps.

As mentioned, this was a highly requested feature and several of them happened to be related to the Start menu, indicating that users want more changes here.

Thus, this ongoing effort to improve the Start menu design is certainly something that users will likely appreciate, given the recent negative press coverage it has received as a result of its stance towards adding ads and promotions.