How Do I Make Start Menu Like I Had in Windows?

If you were a heavy user of the Start menu in Windows, you might feel a bit lost on your new Mac. Although Macs have a lot of great ways to get started, there isn't a direct correlation to the Start menu. At the end of this, I'll suggest some alternatives to the Start menu, but for now let's assume you don't want to have to stretch your way of thinking at all.

It's hard for me to predict what exactly you really used the Start menu for, so I'll cover a few bases here. It seems to me that most people use it as an application launcher, so we'll do that. Also, it can a be a good way to access shortcuts to often used folders and files on your hard drive. Lastly, you can control some system wide functions there like Sleep, Lock, and Play/Pause of music.

So the over-arching idea we will be doing here is placing a folder of special items in your Dock that will act much like your old Start menu did. When you put a folder in the Dock, you can configure it to display its contents in a pop up list that you can select the function you want from. The trick is in what you place in the folder and how you configure it.

Since your New Start menu is really a folder, we can put applications, files, links, scripts, Automator actions, folders, or most importantly, aliases of the preceding items. If you are unclear on what aliases do on the Mac, see our article: 10 Killer Tips for Using Aliases on Your Mac.

Take a look below at the example I made.

This kind of shows you some of the variety you can achieve in your Start menu. One of the cool things you'll see at the bottom is a few Automator actions saved as applications. These are just some examples to help replicate the Windows Start menu, down to the Lock Desktop option. All I did was save the actions as an application and place it in the Start menu folder. You can use either the ones that come stock on you Mac or download some from the internet. See the Dig Deeper section for links to the ones I found.

One of the not so cool things is using folder aliases in your Start menu. In general, I advise that you fill your Start menu with aliases of the items, leaving the real ones where you are used to finding them. The only problem is that folder aliases do not cascade into sub-menus the way real folders do when the are in the pop up Dock list view. Only real folders will do this trick. So my suggestion is to create real folders in your Start menu and fill them with more aliases. That way they will still cascade.

So how do you go about creating this Start menu?
Follow these steps, and then the extras if you want:

1. Create a folder called "Start" somewhere you will remember. Where it is isn't that important.
2. Drag the folder to the Dock to the right or below the dashed line. This is the area for folders and stacks.
3. Right-click on it and select the following options: Sort by: Name, Display as: Folder, View content as: List.
4. Return to your open folder on the Desktop and add the items you want in your Start menu to it. I suggest using aliases unless you want cascading folders. I also suggest you take this opportunity to reduce the normal clutter of the Start menu by being selective about what you add. You don't need all your apps. Just add your favorites.
5. Click the icon in your dock to start using it.

Extra step 1: Organize your items
One trick when listing items by name is to use spaces at the beginning of the file name to make it rise to the top. The more spaces, the more it rises. You can also use the tilde (~) key to make the item go to the bottom of the list. I used both in my example above. The top grouping has two spaces before the letters, the second group has one, the third group has none and the last group has tilde symbol at the beginning.

I also added the dashes and group names by creating a folder, called it what you see: " –––Apps–––" and assigned it a white icon. I added the appropriate spaces to the folder name to get it in the right position. Don't forget, you can call aliases and folders whatever you want and you can choose to organize it how it suits you.

Extra Step 2: Change the icons
I've changed the icons in 3 different categories. You'll notice that I put in some commonly used websites and they have have icons that reflect the site rather than the generic bookmark symbol apple uses on the icons. I also changed the icon for the dividing folders to white so you don't see them and lastly, I changed the icon for the Start menu itself to a key ring, copied from the Keychain Access application.

Changing Icons should be a whole upcoming article, but for now, the idea is to paste a graphic into the upper right of the Get Info panel of any file or folder. For the website icons, I copied a part of the website graphics to my clipboard by looking at the area I wanted, pressing cmd-shift-4, then once the cross-hairs appeared, I held down control and dragged the cross-hairs around the part of the image I wanted. What this does is copy a portion of what the screen is seeing to your clipboard.

Then I select the destination file, choose Get Info, click the existing icon in the upper left of the info panel, and choose Paste. That should paste what is on your clipboard into the icon field. Close the window and it should change.

Note: I noticed that the Start menu in the Dock didn't update with the new icon for a little while. I don't know why.

Typically, using part of a screen grab doesn't give you the best results. It's better to copy an existing icon when you can, so for the Start menu icon, I chose to copy the Keychain Access icon. To do this, I found the application in the utilities folder, selected Get Info for it, selected the icon in the upper right and hit Copy this time. Now when I go back to my Start menu folder in the Finder and use Get Info on it, I select the icon and use Paste. That process should Paste the icon from one file to another.

Extra Step: Add bells and whistles
In my case, I looked around for some Automator actions that might be helpful. I imagine you could also use Apple Scripts here too. You can put Smart Folders in as well, but they won't cascade. Hopefully Apple will fix this issue soon. It would be awfully cool to access Smart Folders like Recent Items in this manner.

That brings me to the last section: Other Options
I only suggest you recreate the Windows Start menu if not having it is debilitating for you. The Mac has lots of other great options to get started, but they are spread out in different places. I do get that having one place for it all is pretty good, but I suggest you try the Mac way because that has advantages too.

First of all, the Finder window sidebar offers pretty much the same opportunities that we covered above. The great thing about using this space is that it also shows up in Open and Save dialog boxes.

Secondly, Spotlight in Leopard is now fast enough to use as an application launcher. If that's all you want a Start menu for, try hitting Spotlight and typing i-t-u-enter and iTunes should launch. It gets smarter and faster the more you use it.

Thirdly, the Apple menu has shortcuts to some of the items discussed above, including the Recent Items menu that has a smart list of recent documents and applications.

Lastly, if what you want is cascading menus to find things in you hard drive, just drag the drive itself to the Dock, or key folders like Documents, Applications or your User folder.


OK, this article has gone on long enough. Share your strategies and opinions in the Comments section below!

DIG DEEPER

10.5: Add a 'recent things' stack to the Dock - MacOSXHints

Automator Actions - Apple

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