Microsoft, who knows no shame about this issue, has found a new place on Windows 11 to push its paid services to its captive audience.
Windows 11 hacker Albacore has noticed that in the latest Windows 11 Developer Builds, Microsoft has started advertising their cloud services in the Windows 11 Start Menu.
Do we really need to stuff OneDrive promos in the user session flyout? Anything for that sweet sweet KPI 😠pic.twitter.com/ZsQGmkntDS
— Albacore (@thebookisclosed) November 6, 2022
The ads look like this:
Microsoft has earlier tested ads in the File Explorer and the Microsoft Store, but adding them to the tiny Start Menu fly-out appears to take the cake.
At present Microsoft does not offer an official way to disable the ads, but a Windows hacking tool such as vivetool does allow the option, as can be seen below:
FYI: if you don't like the idea of having start menu badges like this one show up and you're on Dev (where this is rolling out), you can use ViVeTool to disable the feature:
vivetool /disable /id:36435151 https://t.co/ZTkveoWUcG
— PhantomOcean3 💙💛 (@PhantomOfEarth) November 7, 2022
Currently, the “feature” is confined to public test builds, and Microsoft will hopefully have a rethink before releasing it more widely.
