There are always those who refuse to get used to something new, and in the case of the Windows Start menu, that’s very apparent. Companies and developers know this, which is why there are quite a few solutions for changing the Start menu on Windows 11 (and even versions well before that). OpenShell is the third I get to check out for myself, and it has the major benefit of being completely free.
That’s a big deal if you just want to get rid of the Start menu in Windows 11 or 10, but to me, OpenShell only helped me appreciate why its competitors cost money. It does what it sets out to do, but that’s all it does, and it’s not the most user-friendly or visually appealing app.
About this review: OpenShell is a free program and no compensation was offered by the developer.
OpenShell
Free, but limited
OpenShell is a free tool that does its job of bringing back the classic Start menu design on various Windows versions. It’s not a particularly elegant solution, but it offers plenty of options if you don’t like the modern Start menu designs.
Pros
- Options for Windows 95, XP, and 7 styles for the Start menu
- Lots of configurtion options for how items are displayed
Cons
- Design doesn’t fit into Windows 11 at all
- Limited visual settings available
- UI is overly complex and hard to get to grips with
Availability
OpenShell is a free app that’s available for anyone to download. You can find it on the official GitHub website. The app works with Windows 7, 8.1, 10, and 11, so your bases are covered in terms of compatibility.
What I like
You can probably already tell I’m not a huge fan of what OpenShell offers, but I do have to commend that it offers you some true classic options when it comes to customizing Windows 11particularly the Start menu. Other alternatives these days mostly focus on the Windows 7 Start menu, but OpenShell takes you further back, with options for a Windows XP-style menu and even a Windows 95 one. Each menu design has a few different skins to choose from, which make it look more like the original design or modernize it a bit.
You do have some options, though in terms of overall looks, the style options stop at around Windows 8, so the menu always feels a bit out of place on Windows 11. Still, it does its job of providing you with a classic Start menu if you’re someone who just can’t stand the more recent designs, and it caters to even older users by including these retro options you don’t really get with solutions like Start11 or StartAllBack.
Related
Start11 v2 review: Making the Windows 11 Start menu actually useful
With tons of configuration options for appearance and organization, Start11 makes the Start menu and taskbar so much richer
Lots of configurations for the behavior
One thing you may also like about OpenShell is that it has a seemingly endless amount of settings you can tweak to make the experience just right for you. I’m not kissing, there is a lot here. You can change what special items or folders are shown and if they should be a menu or a simple link, you can choose what apps are displayed (frequent apps or recent apps, for example), hide UWP apps from the recommendations, change the size of jumplists, and so on.
There’s so much at play here that it would be impossible to cover all of it, but if you want to fine-tune how the Start menu looks, this is a pretty good app to do that with. You can spend a lot of time diving into everything it offers, so it’s worth a shot, especially considering it’s free.
What I don’t like
It’s not user-friendly
Yes, having a lot of options is a good thing, but OpenShell is so needlessly complex and densely-packed that it’s just not fun to explore. The Start menu settings window has two rows of tabs with all different kinds of options, and many of these pages have long lists of checkboxes and options to change, and it just feels overwhelming to open for the first few times.
Granted, if you’re installing an app like this, you probably have a lot of time on your hands to get things working just right, but OpenShell is simply not very easy to get to grips with, and you probably won’t be making use of all its features anytime soon.
There’s also a separate menu for changing the File Explorer integrations, which you wouldn’t know about unless you specifically choose to open that one. After all, the Start menu settings window is simply labeled as Open-Shell Menu Settingsit’s reasonable to think this would include all the Settings for the app, but no.
It doesn’t look great
I know you’re probably getting an app like this to get a classic-style Start menu, but it needs to be said that OpenShell just looks a little too old. One thing I loved about StartAllBack is that while it brought you an older style of the Start menu, that menu still looked great as part of Windows 11. The theme options were great and it fit right into Windows 11, bringing the functionality you wanted while still feeling new. OpenShell just feels old. The newest style option feels like Windows 8, and even then, it’s not the best adaptation.
Related
StartAllBack review: Bringing back classic Windows goodness
Don’t like the Windows 11 design changes? StartAllBack takes you back to better times, with some other improvements to boot.
Worse yet, the Windows 7 menu doesn’t really look that much like Windows 7 to me. It reminds me more of Windows Vista than 7, which is just really strange to me.
To top it all off, the integration with the File Explorer looks absolutely hideous, adding a Windows 7-style command bar to the current Windows 11 design, which just clashes with the overall style and looks completely out of place. There isn’t much you can do to make it better, since there are almost no styling options here aside from changing the icon size.
The File Explorer integration is just useless
Finally, it needs to be said that the File Explorer features in OpenShell might as well not be there. Not only do they look completely out of place and make it feel like you’re running some weird beta build of Windows, but there’s also no real use to it, at least not out of the box. Almost all the default actions available in the OpenShell command bar in File Explorer are already in the Windows 11 command bar. And OpenShell doesn’t even replace the standard command bar, it just adds on to it, so you have a bunch of duplicate buttons.
Now, by going into the settings, you can add more buttons that do make some features easier to use, like pasting a shortcut to a file or accessing its properties. But there’s a reason the command bar doesn’t place these options front and center, and I don’t think a ton of users are chomping at the bit to get these buttons more readily accessible.
Should you try OpenShell?
Being that it’s a free app, I can’t really say you shouldn’t try OpenShell at all. It doesn’t hurt to give it a whirl, and it does what it sets out to do in terms of restoring a classic Windows experience. But OpenShell feels like a half-dead project that’s done the bare minimum to be compatible with Windows 11, but has done nothing to be a good fit for Windows 11. It works, but that’s all it really does.
If anything, OpenShell makes me appreciate why apps like Start11 or StartAllBack are paid. A lot of work is put into those apps to make them legitimately interesting and useful, and it just feels like that’s not the case with OpenShell. Again, it’s a free app, so it’s hard to blame the developer, but as a user, I can’t see much reason to get this over the alternatives.
You should get OpenShell if:
- You want to go back to a classic-looking Start menu
- You have the time to navigate the settings
You should not get OpenShell if:
- You want a Start menu that actually looks good
- You don’t want the File Explorer integration
- You can afford to pay for StartAllBack
OpenShell
It’s free
If you want to change your Start menu on Windows 11 without paying a dime, OpenShell is a valid solution, but it’s not as elegant or user-friendly as its competitors. It’s worth a shot if you don’t want to spend money, but it shows why other alternatives are often paid.