Skip to main content

Microsoft Start is a new way for you to stay up to date on your news, interests

Microsoft is launching Microsoft Start, a personalized news feed and collection of informational content from publishers, tailored to your interests.

Available on the web today, and also as a mobile app, the experience should feel pretty familiar if you’re used to Microsoft News or MSN. Building on those services, Microsoft Start brings new technology to your content experiences. That includes leveraging Microsoft’s latest advancements in A.I. and machine learning, along with human moderation to bring you relevant news articles.

Microsoft Start open up on Windows 10 in Edge.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

As seen in the web experience above, Microsoft Start is based on “cards” and is designed so that you don’t need to sort through lists of articles that are not interesting to you. You also won’t need to hunt for a specific headline or explore topics. That’s because Microsoft Start’s feed has curated content from over a thousand global publishers. Plus, the more you engage with content on Microsoft Start, the more refined your experience will get.

Recommended Videos

Just like Microsoft News, Microsoft Start is fully customizable. Any feed in the experience will have information on weather, finance, sports, and traffic. Plus, you can always change which cards you see if you want to switch things up on any given day. More importantly, the things that matter most will be upfront, including search, weather, finance, news, and shopping.

You can get to Microsoft Start on the desktop via Edge, Chrome, or Firefox today by going to MicrosoftStart.com. On Windows 10, you’ll also be able to get to Microsoft Start from the News And Interests experience. Then, on Windows 11, from the Widgets experience.  Microsoft is even including it on the Microsoft Edge new tab page, too.

If you’ve been using Microsoft News online, be ready to get redirected to Microsoft Start in a few days. A new logo for Microsoft Start will also appear in Microsoft News. This is all part of Microsoft’s rollout of the service.

Microsoft mentioned that its studies show people spend seven hours a day online, use six different feeds on a regular basis and check their feeds five times a day. The new experience is sure to be useful as more and more people spend time online and on their computers.

Arif Bacchus
Arif Bacchus is a native New Yorker and a fan of all things technology. Arif works as a freelance writer at Digital Trends…
Google has a magical new way for you to control your Android phone
Holding the Google Pixel 8 Pro, showing its Home Screen.

You don’t need your hands to control your Android phone anymore. At Google I/O 2024, Google announced Project Gameface for Android, an incredible new accessibility feature that will let users control their devices with head movements and facial gestures.

There are 52 unique facial gestures supported. These include raising your eyebrow, opening your mouth, glancing in a certain direction, looking up, smiling, and more. Each gesture can be mapped to an action like pulling down the notification shade, going back to the previous app, opening the app drawer, or going back to home. Users can customize facial expressions, gesture sizes, cursor speed, and more.

Read more
You’re going to hate the latest change to Windows 11
A laptop running Windows 11.

Just two weeks after rolling out a preview build to Windows Insiders, Microsoft is pushing out an update to Windows 11 that adds advertisements to the Start menu. Build KB5036980, which is now slowly rolling out to the wider Windows 11 user base, includes recommendations in the Start menu, and they sneakily sit beside your real apps.

These apps comes exclusively from the Microsoft store, and they sit in the Recommended section of the Start menu. This section includes recently used, frequent, and new apps, but one (or more) slots will now be dedicated to an ad. As the update reads: "The Recommended section of the Start menu will show some Microsoft Store apps. These apps come from a small set of curated developers. This will help you to discover some of the great apps that are available."

Read more
Windows 11 tips and tricks: 8 hidden settings you need to try
Windows 11 on a tablet.

Windows 11 has been around for quite a while now. The operating system isn't as new as when it first came out in 2021, but many people are still updating it for the first time from Windows 10. Yet whether you read a Windows 11 review and just installed it, or have been using it since launch, there are a few things that you still might want to tweak to get a better experience. Microsoft doesn't have all these settings upfront, but we're here to surface them for you.
Move the Taskbar and Start Menu to the left

One of the biggest differences between Windows 10 and Windows 11 is the location of the Taskbar and Start Menu. On Windows 10, the Taskbar and Start Menu are positioned to the left of the screen. Windows 11, though, changes that by moving both to the center. If this annoys you, then you can easily change it back.

Read more