About the Start menu, how do Apps appear by category?

Welcome Leon E S,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A forum. I’m sorry to hear about the issue you’re experiencing where apps appear by category only when the Start menu is using the Category view. 

The feature you mentioned - where applications are grouped by category - has been referenced as “coming soon,” but it has not yet been released to general users. 

You can find this information in the following link: Customize the Windows 11 Start menu | Microsoft Learn 

If your Start menu looks different across your devices, this may be due to differences in Windows versions, user configurations, or system update status (one device may have received newer features while the other has not). 

You can try some workaround steps to troubleshoot the issue:  

Option 1: Check your Windows 11 version 

• Go to Settings > System > About and look under Windows specifications for Version and OS build 
• If the build is older than recent 24H2/25H2 releases, your Start menu may not have the Category/Grid options yet 

Option 2: Switch to Category view (if present) 

• Open Start and go to the All / full apps section. 
• Click the View: dropdown on the right and choose Category to group apps like on your first PC 

I really hope that the information I gave above was helpful to you. Please feel free to reply below and let me know if you have further concern on this matter.    

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Hi, I'm Rodrigo and I will help you.
This is a new feature added on the late 2025 updates, make sure your device is up-to-date to see it.
The update rollout varies from device to device, so it may take longer to show on other devices.