StartIsBack

StartIsBack radically improves desktop usability and makes new Start screen clutter-free. StartIsBack is fully native lightweight zero-privileges program, cheap and fair, fast, stable and secure.

Boot to desktop

Your session would start with the desktop. Always. Unlike other solutions, StartIsBack goes directly to desktop every time without flashing Start Screen even for a millisecond.

Original fully-featured Windows 7 start menu

StartIsBack restores original Windows 7 start menu with all its features: search, drag&drop, pinned and recently used apps, fully customizable settings. Start button and Start menu look and behave exactly as they used to in Windows 7.

Desktop and Modern interfaces are clearly separated

StartIsBack is the only tool which is able to provide consistency in Windows 8 by separating desktop and modern programs. Real work is done on desktop while new Start screen turns into launcher for modern apps only.

Make Start screen clutter-free

Windows 8 forces you to organize new Start screen which can quickly become a long list of mess with automatically pinned programs. This is no longer the case with StartIsBack. If you turn Start screen into Apps screen, you won’t have the pain to manage two Start places.

Totally native

StartIsBack does not run any additional services or programs. It integrates into your computer smoothly. It does not require any other tools or frameworks to install and can be installed without administrative privileges. Start menu is fully localized into your language with same metrics and names Windows 7 had.

Rich customization and configuration

StartIsBack allows you to configure many aspects of appearance and behavior of Start menu and Modern UI elements. This is done in most reliable way, within attractive and easy configuration UI.

StartIsBack on Windows 10:

• Live badges for modern apps on taskbar and Start menu!
• Ability to reduce resource usage by disabling newer Start menu and Cortana processes from prelaunching
• Ability to use adequately sized (32×32) large icons and larger start menu button on taskbar
• Modern icon glyphs on Start menu right hand pane
• Modern blur, drop shadow and immersive context menus for start menu
• Fully dynamic DPI aware start menu and configuration app
• New modern style with round user picture
• Lots of new minor additions and tweaks

What’s New:

• Support for Windows 10 Insider builds 2127x
• Allows new colorful application icons to be shown in taskbar and start menu
• Reinstates UseWin32TrayClockExperience registry key support
• Adds obscure Win+Shift+Alt+Esc hotkey to terminate hang foreground application
• Fix reboot not working if other users are logged in
• Fix light and dark mode issues
• Reboot now honors “Use my sign-in info to <..> reopen apps after <..> restart” option
• Light Mode support
• Light Mode Plain10 style
• Switched web links to HTTPS
• Various fixes and improvements
• Taskbar icons margins can be optionally increased now
• ‘Pin to Start menu’ context menu item is removed if SIB start menu is not used
• Addressed reported minor regressions in user experience
• Lots of minor fixes

StartIsBack now has Taskbar Perks, which allows advanced tweaks as:

• Center taskbar icons
• Segmented taskbar
• Dynamically clear taskbar
• Plus there are additional taskbar icon tweaks available.

Known issues:

• Locked segmented taskbar may glitch
• 19H1 is not supported

Changes in 2.8 Beta 2:

• Improved segments style
• Initial support for 19H1 and Light theme
• StartIsBack now can enable old mixer and sound settings for sound tray icon in 19H1: set EnableMtcUvc (Google it) to not 1.