Microsoft ditches react to turbocharge windows 11 start menu

Published on 30/03/2026 16:04 in technology • Colin Packham

Microsoft is ripping JavaScript out of the Windows 11 Start menu and rebuilding it with native WinUI code, a move that will shave milliseconds off every click and finally silence complaints that the OS feels sluggish on high-end hardware.

React is out, winui is in

The company has told TechCurrent it will phase out the React-powered scaffolding that currently renders the Recommended section and the all-apps list. Engineers inside the Windows shell team confess the hybrid approach—JavaScript business logic married to native XAML surfaces—was always a compromise. React let designers iterate fast, but the abstraction layer added frame drops and an unmistakable rubber-band latency when the menu popped open.

Insider builds already show a WinUI-only Start menu firing up in under 90 ms on a Surface Pro 9, down from the 220 ms logged last autumn. The gain sounds trivial, yet it is the difference between a UI that feels welded to the glass and one that reminds users of the old Windows 7 snappiness.

Users gain speed, lose nothing—except maybe bloat

Users gain speed, lose nothing—except maybe bloat

The Recommended block will survive the transplant, but Microsoft is tightening the relevance algorithm so that abandoned installers and one-time PDFs no longer squat on prime real estate. A toggle to nuke the entire section remains, though disabling it also erases jump-list history in File Explorer and taskbar—Microsoft’s gentle way of asking whether you really want to go back to 1995.

Third-party devs who tapped into the React Start menu APIs will need to migrate to WinUI 3 before 2025. The carrot: access to the same compositor layer that now powers the slick new volume flyout. The stick: legacy hooks will simply stop loading after next year’s annual feature drop.

Roll-out begins with Dev Channel insiders this month and will creep across release rings through 2024. By the time the next Snapdragon X Elite machines hit shelves, the JavaScript ghost will be gone, and Windows 11 will finally move like the native beast it claims to be.