Let’s put it this way; when Microsoft announced its plans to start adding features to Windows 10 once again, despite the operating system’s inevitable demise in October 2025, everyone expected slightly different things to see ported over from Windows 11. Sadly, the latest addition to Windows 10 is one of the most annoying changes coming from Windows 11’s Start menu.
Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced a so-called “Account Manager” for Windows 11 that appears on the screen when you click your profile picture on the Start menu. Instead of just showing you buttons for logging out, locking your device or switching profiles, it displays Microsoft 365 ads. All the actually useful buttons are now hidden behind a three-dot submenu (apparently, my 43-inch display does not have enough space to accommodate them). Now, the “Account Manager” is coming to Windows 10 users.
The change was spotted in the latest Windows 10 preview builds from the Beta and Release Preview Channels. It works in the same way as Windows 11, and it is disabled by default for now because the submenu with sign-out and lock buttons does not work.
Anybody remember Litestep (http://litestep.net/)? It was an open source shell alternative to the default Windows shell.
There’s actually something pretty similar for Windows 10 and 11. It even offers tiling. Not as great as a Linux desktop environment, but much better than the garbage Micro$oft ships by default. https://github.com/eythaann/Seelen-UI
Add PowerToys Run or Flow Launcher and you have a pretty decent, usable environment
Of course use the new Windows Terminal (preferably with WSL and a good Linux shell, but newer PowerShell with oh-my-posh and a few other modifications is also pretty decent if you need to use the CLI in a Windows environment for some reason)
Windows Terminal + PowerShell setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-aK2_WwrmM