Buried in this announcement about Windows 11 improvements is a fascinating admission: the Windows 11 Start menu has been built using React this entire time. Microsoft is now migrating it to their native WinUI3 framework to improve performance and reduce interaction latency.

This explains a lot about why the Start menu has felt sluggish compared to Windows 10.

The React → WinUI migration is the most technically interesting detail imo.

WinUI is still a bloated pig compared to Win32.

If MS really wants its users back, many of which have left for Linux and Mac, it should seriously consider going back to the Win7 era UI, or at least restore the Windows Classic theme.

Coca Cola famously improved its position when New Coke flopped and it reintroduced the original flavor as "Coca Cola Classic."

If you can't make it better, make it worse, it seems.

Lords be praised. Microsoft is bringing back native performance .

How does this happen? How do you build a fundamental OS control in react?

Why it was necessary to rewrite start menu in React at all? Why rewriting what works fine?