At long last, Windows users, the Start menu will be coming back. A new series of leaked pictures provided by German website ComputerBase give us our best look yet at Windows 9, including the newly redesigned Start menu that users have been begging for since the release of Windows 8 in 2012.
As you can see in the picture, the new Start menu looks much like the old one in terms of overall layout but its icons and general design have been updated to fit in with the “Modern” UI that Microsoft has been pushing for the last two years. You can also see a search icon next to the Start menu, which will presumably be a quicker shortcut to universal search on Windows 9 than opening up the Start menu and searching.
The picture above also gives us a nice look at the notifications center that Microsoft will be bringing to our desktops. It pops up on the right-hand side of your screen and will presumably function much like notifications centers on our smartphones by letting us know when we have new emails and or alerting us to various interactions on different social media platforms. Earlier leaks that we’ve seen claim that there will be a button that will let us clear off all our notifications at once, although we sadly don’t see it in these leaked pictures.
All told, this looks like a promising compromise between the changes that Microsoft introduced in Windows 8 and the more traditional desktop interface that many longtime Windows users have been asking for.
Be sure to check out ComputerBase’s full gallery of leaked pictures by clicking the source link below.
