Microsoft explains that the Windows 11 menu got crowded and slow over time. The new menu cuts down on clutter at the top but still keeps popular actions easy to find. They say the menu is now faster mainly because it starts out cleaner, since every app that adds its own items makes the menu work harder each time you open it.
At the bottom of the menu, there’s a new Customize shortcut that opens a page in Settings under Personalization > Context menu. The first section lets you turn built-in commands like Send to or Create shortcut on or off, and you can also enable commands like Print that were missing before. The next section lets you choose which app extensions show up in the main menu or in a submenu, or you can hide the submenu completely.
The third section lets you decide where the most common commands go. You can have Cut, Copy, Paste, Rename, Delete, and Share listed right in the menu, more like how it was in Windows 10, instead of as a row of icons. You can also move Properties to the very bottom of the menu.
Build 26220.9757 also brings some performance improvements to the Settings home page. Microsoft says this should make loading times faster in some cases, but they haven’t shared any numbers yet, so it’s not clear how much faster it really is.
As usual for the Beta Channel, these changes are rolling out slowly, so not everyone on this build will get them right away. If you’re on the separate 26H1 track, you’ll get a different build, 28020.3292, instead of 26220.9757. Microsoft also reminds testers that features in these builds might not make it to the final release, so the new menu is interesting to try but not something to rely on yet.