Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users. After testing these briefly with Windows Insiders earlier this month, Microsoft has started to distribute update KB5036980 to Windows 11 users this week, which includes “recommendations” for apps from the Microsoft Store in the Start menu.
Luckily you can disable these ads, or “recommendations” as Microsoft calls them. If you’ve installed the latest KB5036980 update then head into Settings > Personalization > Start and turn off the toggle for “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more.” While KB5036980 is optional right now, Microsoft will push this to all Windows 11 machines in the coming weeks.
Microsoft’s move to enable ads in the Windows 11 Start menu follows similar promotional spots in the Windows 10 lock screen and Start menu. Microsoft also started testing ads inside the File Explorer of Windows 11 last year before disabling the experiment and saying the test was “not intended to be published externally.” Hopefully that experiment remains very much an experiment.
That’s usually just a setting in the desktop environment. I don’t know about GNOME or others, but KDE generally has a lot of customization like this.
Wait, could you explain? So KDE can control scaling at the application level? Because I was able to set the scaling in the actual settings just fine and it worked for the UI and most applications. I just remember a few wouldn’t scale up no matter what I did.
Not at the application level. I thought you were talking about desktop-wide scaling? You can also scale plasma-specific stuff independently, like the icons on the taskbar or whatever.
But inside of an application, it would really depend on what framework the application uses. You might have options if it’s Qt or GTK+ and is built properly (e.g. you could target it with CSS or something), but the application can easily override that, so you may be SOL.