this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
749 points (98.1% liked)
Microblog Memes
9998 readers
2870 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Win+R, wt, Enter
OR
Win-X, I
The start menu has sucked for a long time, but you don't have to use it. I cringe when I see other IT folks using its search feature to launch common apps.
At least they are improving the app list with a nice category view and removing the All Apps button (still in preview). That'll at least upgrade it from hot garbage to okayish.
You cringe, when you see other IT folks use it, but it's literally what it was built for and how it works on Linux to this day. (And even in a well managed corporate environment it works 80+% of the time)
And it's not like what you wrote works for any other application.
Funnily enough I started using the Win+Shift+Ctrl+Alt-shortcuts for OneNote, Excel and Word unironically as of late, because the start menu got sooo slow.
Right?! I love the people giving 'help' on how to launch the terminal in other ways, lol, but, this was the worst of them.
This isn't OOP saying "OMG! For terminal specifically, Windows is making it so difficult for me! Please, someone, show me another way to get to the terminal! Bonus points if you can be a jerk while doing so!" It's them saying "Windows start menu search is fucking broke as hell and here is an example"
Saying that people are 'cringe' for expecting the search to work isn't helpful at all (people giving tips on other ways to get to programs though, yeah, that can be helpful to try and help others work around MS breaking basic functionality). This is functionality that has been in Windows since Windows 7 and has been in every OS with a GUI that I've used for a really long time ... expecting it to work isn't absurd in the least.
Can't we all just join together in our disappointment/hatred of the Start Menu Search functionality and the enshittification of the OS in general rather than having to try and make it into a "I'm so much better than you because I do this in a power user way"? Especially when that power user way isn't even useful for a lot of applications!
It's been broken and slow as hell since Vista. So yes, when IT "professionals" haven't figured out other ways to run common programs by now, it hints at how remedial their skills are.
Modern start menu search was designed to drive users toward Bing and give MS-favored results to users. It's hot garbage and has been for a while. So yeah, if you rely on as an IT pro it you probably aren't very technical.
You can launch any common inbox or Office app and most MMC panels from the Win-R menu. And most of them haven't changed since Windows 2000 / Office 95. Not being able to adapt and improve upon how you perform your job is sad.
I get more frustrated at how many people, especially IT folks, don't get that these anti-features are configurable.
5 minutes (at most) in regedit and/or Group Policy to disable this bullshit entirely? No, let's add a three second mental hitch where I have to recall the magic key combo every time I want to open the program. And still leave the problem in place for everything else.