StartIsBack icon
StartIsBack icon

StartIsBack

 32 likes

StartIsBack returns Windows 8 a real fully featured start menu and start button, behaving exactly like the ones in Windows 7. StartIsBack radically improves desktop usability and makes new Start screen clutter-free.

Boot to Desktop

License model

Application type

Platforms

  • Windows  Windows 8 (32bit or 64bit)
4.8 / 5 Avg rating (8)
32likes
7comments
0news articles

Features

Suggest and vote on features

Properties

  1.  Customizable

Features

  1.  Works Offline
  2.  Dark Mode
  3.  Portable
  4.  Ad-free

 Tags

StartIsBack News & Activities

Highlights All activities

Recent News

No news, maybe you know any news worth sharing?
Share a News Tip

Recent activities

Show all activities

StartIsBack information

  • Developed by

    Unknown
  • Licensing

    Proprietary and Commercial product.
  • Pricing

    One time purchase (perpetual license) that costs $0.
  • Rating

    Average rating of 4.8
  • Alternatives

    27 alternatives listed
  • Supported Languages

    • English

Our users have written 7 comments and reviews about StartIsBack, and it has gotten 32 likes

StartIsBack was added to AlternativeTo by lucasffg on Nov 25, 2012 and this page was last updated Sep 9, 2022. StartIsBack is sometimes referred to as StartIsBack++.

Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Top Positive Comment
Shoji
Feb 3, 2018
3
  • 30 days Trial
  • Start menu didn’t interfere with fullscreen games
  • Fast Performance
  • Easy to use, complete clone of Windows XP/7 Start Menu
Lockszmith_
Feb 5, 2023
0

The only valid solution to have a taskbar moved to the side in Windows 11. Reasonably priced, even if you want to enable this across multiple computers.

Clean implementation - seems load as a hook - so no extra process. Running ProcessMonitor it seems nothing nefarious is happening - no network calls (unless checking for updates), very very clean.

Kudos to developer for doing something Microsoft decided was too complicated to solve.

superstickynotemealt
Sep 5, 2021
2

Started out with Classic Shell, then moved to Open Shell once it died, now I'm moving here since Open Shell has a few unfixed issues and development has seemed to have nearly completely stopped. Out of all the paid for options this one seems like the nicest version that just works and is the only one without DRAM that I find too intrusive. The wording on the license allows you to transfer the license to new computers you just have to wait 30 days from the last time you activated a given license on your old computer, and comes with lifetime updates. The Dev is active on twitter and appears to be very unimpressed with windows 11 which is encouraging as well as it means there is good likelihood that StartIsBack will be updated to run on it once it's out.

Chris
Sep 16, 2020
1

Great alternative to Windows 10's start menu. Way more customisation options. Easy enough to still access the native start menu if desired (middle-mouse click).

Guest
Mar 29, 2018
2

It works and while not free, it is very cheap.

peridotcheese3
Jan 18, 2021

It Also Make Your Taskbar look like windows 7 taskbar (modern verison)

xyzerb
Dec 25, 2017
2

Best option to replace Classic Shell as of 12/24/2017

lurker1
Jun 2, 2013
2

"Unlike other solutions, StartIsBack goes directly to desktop every time without flashing Metro Start Screen even for a millisecond."

Finally ! Something to completely skip Metro Start Screen ! Start menu in corner of the screen just like windows 7 and customisable icon is a nice bonus too.

What is StartIsBack?

StartIsBack returns Windows 8 a real fully featured start menu and start button, behaving exactly like the ones in Windows 7. StartIsBack radically improves desktop usability and makes new Start screen clutter-free. StartIsBack is fully native lightweight zero-privileges program, cheap and fair, fast, stable and secure.