Tutorial: How to Increase or Decrease the Height of the Start Menu

This tutorial will show you how to increase or decrease the height of the Start Menu in Windows 7 without displaying recently opened programs and without displaying sub-menus.

Many users would like to change the height of the Start Menu in Windows 7. There are many reasons for why a user would want this. My personal reason is so that all the programs in the All Programs list of the Start Menu will display without my having to scroll up and down the list.

The problem is that the Start Menu is dynamic and, it would seem, cannot be manually sized. Two existing methods of changing the height of the Start Menu are to 1) display recently opened programs; and 2) display the sub-menus that appear on the right side of the Start Menu, such as Documents, Downloads, and Games.

However, for those who would rather not display recently opened programs and not have some useless sub-menus displayed, a third, more flexible way exists, and this tutorial will cover that method.

Here's How:

1. Right-click on the Start button and select Properties.

2. Under the Privacy section, check Store and display recently opened programs in the Start menu.

3. Click on the Customize button on the top.

4. Under the Start menu size section on the bottom, change the Number of recent programs to display to a number between 8 and 30, where 8 is a shortest Start Menu and 18 is the tallest. Note: The default number of recent programs to display is 10.

5. Click on the OK button to save this setting.

6. Under the Privacy section, uncheck Store and display recently opened programs in the Start menu. Click on the Apply button. (Note: The trick of how this method of resizing the Start Menu works is that even when the Store and display recently opened programs in the Start menu box is unchecked, Windows still keeps the size of the Start Menu to the last setting of Number of recent programs to display.)

7. Click on the Start Menu and look at its current height. If you are fine with the current height, just click the OK button of the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window. Otherwise, repeat steps 2 to 6 until you arrive at the desired Start Menu height.

Hope this helps,
Victor Ly

Good one Vic.

Thanks for the tip, it worked beautifully. The Start menu in Windows 7 is truly the worst. Yeesh.

That´s interesting, V3. I saw your post on the other site and wondered about it then. I do not know why, but I do not seem to have run into this problem??
In the Right click - properties -, on installation, I always trun off the "Store and display..etc" (both boxes, and this becomes my default.
In customise, I have truned off "Default Programs" and "Highlight newly..etc". and "recent programs"

This is my start menu. It remains like this.

Attachment 5456

It's a very good tip that I've been using since Windows XP times.

Great tip, thank you very much..... I used it and it did exactly what I wanted.

Originally Posted by cybercore

It's a very good tip that I've been using since Windows XP times.

Same here and I always have to have everything 'just so' lol..
Anyways for interest here's how mine is set up.. Pretty trad really..

Very neat, Kem.

Cheers man.. Like the new start button? I made it yesterday and is my current favourite.

I sure noticed the start button, and your user picture looks neat too.