Make the left pane of the Windows 10 start menu wider

The left pane in my Windows 10 start menu is too small. For example, I have the following two folder entries cut off:

Microsoft SQL Server 20..
Microsoft SQL Server 20..

(I can hover on start menu entries to see the full name, but that does not work for start menu folders which are just a little bit too long.)

How can I make the left pane wider? I can resize the start menu as a whole by dragging the right border, but that only increases the size available to the modern app tiles.

Heinzi

Posted 2015-08-25T08:33:15.333

Reputation: 2 729

3This is ridiculous. I reported this to MS in the very first Technical Preview back last year. – Daniel Hilgarth – 2015-09-20T20:56:45.153

something http://superuser.com/questions/963168/can-i-increase-the-width-of-the-all-apps-section-of-windows-10s-start-menu# but not really helpful

– Abdullah Saleem – 2016-01-26T21:32:33.443

Answers

In windows 10, you cannot change the size of the left pane of the default start menu.

However, there is an application called Classic Shell which can change your user interface back to the older windows 7 style, where you can resize all the parts of your start menu. It also changes windows Explorer to the Windows 7 style.

If you don't want to bother to install anything, go to Windows Explorer, and go to the Start Menu folder:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

and go to Properties.. of the application(s) whose name is too long and uncheck the read only option. Then, go to the Privacy tab and give your user full access to the folder. finally, you can rename it as per your liking. I hope this solves your problem.

Source: Renaming a start menu Item in Windows 10

Raghu Ranganathan

Posted 2015-08-25T08:33:15.333

Reputation: 651