Question about the width of the start menu

[Hottihotte]

Is there a way to make the wide empty area narrower when no apps are pinned and it automatically widens when you pin apps, like in Windows 10?

[bbmaster123]

Not automatically no. Unfortunately the windows 11 start menu isn't currently user resizable at all, although there is a visual state in there called ResizeEnabled so maybe with another future mod. We can style visual states with the start menu styler mod, but not set them directly.

The best we can do right now is create (I have an older Windows10 minimal somewhere in my vm) a variant, with appslist only, and the menu manually made narrower.
Then you would have to swap between theme variants whenever you need to. not exactly ideal

[Hottihotte]

Not automatically no. Unfortunately the windows 11 start menu isn't currently user resizable at all, although there is a visual state in there called ResizeEnabled so maybe with another future mod. We can style visual states with the start menu styler mod, but not set them directly.

The best we can do right now is create (I have an older Windows10 minimal somewhere in my vm) a variant, with appslist only, and the menu manually made narrower. Then you would have to swap between theme variants whenever you need to. not exactly ideal

Thanks for the answer.
It works with ExplorerPatcher, hence my question.
But since I'm now focusing on Windhawk, I want to leave out the EP entirely.
The reason is that I don't want to run two tools and the EP is already declared "undesirable" in Defender.

I would be happy if that were possible and changing the design (when you pin apps) wouldn't be a problem.

[bbmaster123]

Yea it does work with EP like you say, you could even use windhawk to style the real w10 menu from EP, even on 24h2, just the targets are a bit different.

I'm personally keeping EP on my main system, I just love the weather widget on the w10 taskbar too much! haha

Agreed, but that likely wont be possible as long as the apps list and pinned list are are 2 separate view modes by default, unlike the windows 10 start menu

[Hottihotte]

However, ExplorerPatcher is not compatible with many Windhawk mods.
At least not if you use the Windows 10 taskbar style (ExplorerPatcher) because only that brings the old taskbar back in Windows 11 24h2.
For example
https://windhawk.net/mods/taskbar-grouping

Causes a separate button to be created on the taskbar for each new window. For example, notice the two separate buttons for Notepad on the screenshot
What ExplorerPatcher cannot do but the mod is simply not compatible.
So I wanted to switch completely to Windhawk.

[bbmaster123]

because you have 2 notepads open? if you set not to group, then it wont group, I don't understand the incompatibility? Besides, EP does work with windhawk and the styler mods, just the windows 10 taskbar cant be styled. EP with windows 11 taskbar works fine, win10/win11 start menu works fine, etc

here's a quick example with win10 start and win11 taskbar on 24h2

Anyway let me know if there's something I can help you with in regards to styling, cheers!