How to Enable or Disable Recommended Tips, Shortcuts, New Apps, and More on the Start Menu in Windows 11

The Windows 11 Start menu includes a Recommended section that can show tips, recently added apps, suggestions, and personalized shortcuts based on how you use the device. For some users this feels helpful and adaptive, but for others it looks cluttered, distracting, or unpredictable. In enterprise environments, those dynamic suggestions can also undermine standardized training and confuse users who expect an unchanging layout.

Learning how to enable or disable recommended tips lets you choose whether that space is a discovery surface or a quiet, predictable launchpad. You can reduce distraction, remove promotional content, and keep Start menus consistent across teams by turning off certain recommendation sources or hiding the Recommended area entirely on supported editions.

How Start menu recommendations work

The Start menu is divided into Pinned, All apps, and Recommended. The Recommended section is populated from several signals: newly installed apps, recently opened files, and Windows-generated suggestions such as tips, shortcuts, and Store app recommendations. Each of those is governed by a different toggle or policy, which is why you can have recent files but no app suggestions, or hide tips while still seeing new installs.

Under the hood, Windows 11 uses per-user settings stored under Explorer\Advanced along with policies like HideRecommendedSection and “Remove Recommended section from Start Menu” to control what appears. That layered model means home users can configure recommendations from Settings, while IT can override those preferences centrally using Group Policy or MDM.

Prerequisites

To follow the methods in this article, you need a Windows 11 device and an account with local administrator rights for registry or policy-based changes. You should also be comfortable restarting File Explorer or signing out and back in, because some Start menu settings only fully apply when the shell reloads. In domain or enterprise environments, you will need access to gpedit.msc or the Group Policy Management Console, plus up-to-date Windows 11 ADMX templates that include Start menu policy settings.

Use Start menu settings

For individual devices or quick adjustments, the Settings app is the easiest way to enable or disable Start menu recommendations. This method is ideal when the machine is not tightly managed by Group Policy and you want user-level control.

To configure recommendations through Start settings:

1. Open Settings (Win + I).
2. Select Personalization, then select Start.
3. Use the following toggles as needed:
   • Show recently added apps
   • Show recently opened items in Start, Jump Lists, and File Explorer
   • Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more
4. Turn these toggles on to surface recommended content, or off to keep the Start menu clean and static.
5. Open Start and check the Recommended section to confirm that newly installed apps, recent files, and suggestion tiles match your preferences.

On some builds, turning off “Show recommended files in Start, recent files in File Explorer, and items in Jump Lists” will also disable recent files in File Explorer and jump lists, because those features share a single recent-activity list. If you are planning changes in a production environment, be aware of that coupling so you do not unintentionally remove recent files from File Explorer.

Configure recommendations via Registry Editor

If you prefer more direct control or want to script per-user changes, you can configure Start recommendations via the registry. Registry edits apply to the current user profile, and they are useful when Group Policy is not available or when you need consistent behavior for a particular user.

To adjust recommendation behavior with Registry Editor:

1. Press Win + R, type regedit, and press Enter.
2. Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
3. Create or modify DWORD values such as:
4. Start_Recommendations (1 = enable tips/shortcut-style recommendations, 0 = disable them)
5. Start_TrackProgs (1 = track recently added apps, 0 = stop tracking them)
6. Start_TrackDocs (1 = show recent files, 0 = hide recent files)
7. Close Registry Editor.
8. Restart File Explorer (via Task Manager or by running taskkill /f /im explorer.exe then explorer.exe) or sign out and sign back in.

Some builds use additional values, like Start_IrisRecommendations, to control “Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more,” so you may see that name in scripts or .reg files. In all cases, take care when editing the registry: export a backup first and test your changes on a non-production machine whenever possible.

Disable recommendations using Group Policy

In enterprise environments, Group Policy is the most scalable way to disable Start recommendations and keep behavior consistent across users. Windows 11 provides policies that can hide the Recommended section entirely on supported editions, stop recently added apps from appearing, and disable recent documents across the shell.

To configure Start recommendation behavior via Group Policy:

1. Open gpedit.msc on a Windows 11 Pro/Enterprise device, or use the Group Policy Management Console in a domain.
2. Navigate to: User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar.
3. Configure policies such as:
4. Remove Recommended section from Start Menu (to hide the Recommended area on supported editions).
5. Do not display recently added apps.
6. Do not keep a list of recently opened documents.
7. Set these policies to Enabled to block the associated behavior, or to Disabled/Not configured to allow user-controlled recommendations.
8. Run gpupdate /force, then restart Explorer or sign out/in so the Start menu reloads under the new policy.

Note that “Remove Recommended section from Start Menu” applies only to certain editions (such as Education and Enterprise) according to Microsoft’s documentation. On other editions, you can still suppress most content via Settings and supporting policies, even if you cannot remove the frame of the section entirely.

Automate recommendation settings with PowerShell

PowerShell is a natural fit for automating Start recommendation configuration across multiple devices or embedding it into provisioning pipelines. Because the behavior is driven by HKCU registry values, a PowerShell script can quickly standardize settings for the signed-in user.

Typical automation steps include:

1. Opening PowerShell as administrator.
2. Using Set-ItemProperty on HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced to set:
3. Start_Recommendations to 0 to disable tips and suggestions, or 1 to enable them.
4. Start_TrackProgs to 0 or 1 to disable or enable recently added apps.
5. Start_TrackDocs to 0 or 1 to hide or show recent files.
6. Restarting File Explorer with Stop-Process -Name explorer -Force so the Start menu reloads under the new settings.

You can package these commands into reusable scripts and push them via RMM or MDM. That way, your endpoints regularly check and correct their own Start menu settings, reducing drift and manual overhead.

Verify recommendation behavior

After altering settings or policies, always verify how the Start menu behaves for the affected user. Start with a simple visual check: open the Start menu and confirm whether the Recommended section shows items or is empty/hidden according to your configuration.

For a more structured test:

1. Install a new app and see if it appears under Recommended when “recently added apps” and recommendations are enabled.
2. Open a few documents and check whether those files show up as recent items in the Start menu.
3. Turn off “Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more” and confirm that tips and suggested apps disappear.
4. If using Group Policy, ensure that the Start menu no longer responds to user changes in Settings for the controlled options.
5. In enterprise environments, combine on-device checks with central reporting (for example, via MDM compliance policies) to confirm that devices are picking up the correct Start menu configuration.

Additional considerations

A few nuances are worth keeping in mind before you standardize on a particular configuration. Some Start recommendations — including Store app suggestions and certain tips — may depend on your Microsoft account, region, or Insider channel, so you may see differences between lab and production machines. On managed devices, Start layouts may also be deployed via provisioning packages, XML layouts, or MDM CSPs, which can interact with or override user-level recommendation settings.

Removing recommendations does not uninstall apps or change what users can run; it only affects what is surfaced in the Start menu. Also, privacy controls that disable recent items can affect both Start and File Explorer, because they share a common recent-activity list. Finally, when settings are enforced through Group Policy or HKLM-based registry paths, users cannot override them from the Settings app, which is usually what you want in standardized enterprise builds.

Troubleshooting

If recommendations still appear after you think you have disabled them, start by checking for conflicting configurations. Confirm that the Start toggles in Settings are off and that there are no Group Policy settings re-enabling recommendations or recently added apps. For registry-based configurations, verify that you edited the correct HKCU keys for the active user and that the values are set to 0 where appropriate.

When recently added apps do not show up even though you expect them, make sure Start_TrackProgs is set to 1 and that no policy like “Do not display recently added apps” is enabled. If recent items vanish unexpectedly, review privacy settings under Settings > Privacy & security, as turning off “recent activity” can remove entries in both Start and File Explorer. If the Start menu does not update at all after changes, restart explorer.exe or sign out/in; in stubborn cases, clearing icon and Start caches can help.

For Group Policy issues, confirm you are using the correct Windows 11 ADMX version and that the policy is actually linked and scoped to the OU or group you are testing. Use gpresult or Resultant Set of Policy tools to see which Start menu settings are effectively applied.

NinjaOne integration

If you manage a fleet of Windows 11 devices with NinjaOne, Start menu recommendations are a natural candidate for automation. NinjaOne can push registry changes that set Start_Recommendations, Start_TrackProgs, and Start_TrackDocs across managed endpoints, ensuring that every user sees the same Start behavior. You can also distribute PowerShell scripts that enforce these values and restart Explorer as needed, either at onboarding or on a recurring schedule.

Because NinjaOne supports compliance reporting and drift detection, you can monitor which devices still expose Recommended items and which conform to your baselines. When a system falls out of compliance — for example, due to user edits or profile changes — NinjaOne can automatically reapply your preferred configuration. Over time, this makes your Start menu UX predictable and reduces time spent hand-tuning individual machines.

Key takeaways

Start menu recommendations in Windows 11 are useful for discovery and quick access, but they are not universally loved, especially in environments that value consistency and minimal distractions. With a combination of Start settings, registry keys, Group Policy, and automation, you can tailor the Recommended section — or remove it where supported — to fit your users and your policies.

Use Settings for quick, per-device tuning; Registry Editor and PowerShell for scripted, per-user enforcement; and Group Policy or MDM when you need to lock behavior down across entire departments or organizations. Always verify Start behavior after changes and consider the knock-on effect on recent files and privacy settings before you finalize your standard.

In summary

Managing Start menu recommendations in Windows 11 gives you precise control over how dynamic and personalized that space feels, whether you are tuning a single laptop or a full fleet of managed devices. By using Settings, registry keys, Group Policy, and automation tools together, you can declutter the Recommended section, reduce distractions, and standardize the Start experience without sacrificing access to the apps and files your users rely on every day.