The Start menu in the recent versions of Windows 11 shows a phone sidebar to help you quickly access your calls and messages right from your Windows 11 PC without touching your smartphone.
While the phone sidebar in the Start menu is helpful for quickly making a call or sending a text, many users do not want to see it all the time. That is, most users prefer seeing the phone sidebar only when they want to access their smartphone from Windows 11.
During the initial days of the feature, an option was offered in the Start menu settings page of the Settings app to show or hide the phone sidebar. That would mean that multiple clicks to show or hide the phone sidebar.
The team behind Windows 11 has listened to the feedback and now offers an easy option to show/hide the Start menu phone sidebar.
Windows 11 now offers an option in the Start menu to hide or show the phone sidebar. Yes, you no longer need to open the Start menu settings page to show or hide the Start menu phone sidebar.
Show or hide phone sidebar quickly in Windows 11 Start menu
Step 1: Open the Start menu. You may either click the Windows logo icon on the taskbar or press the Windows logo key on the keyboard to open the Start menu.
Step 2: Once the Start menu is open, click the small phone icon right next to the search bar (refer to the image below) to show or hide the phone sidebar. That is, if you click the phone icon when the phone sidebar is being shown, the phone sidebar will disappear immediately after you click the phone icon. Likewise, if you click when the phone sidebar is hidden, it will appear immediately.
Important: If the phone icon is missing from the Start menu, please ensure that the “Show mobile device in Start” option is turned on in the Settings > Personalization > Start page.
Of course, if you have not linked your smartphone to your Windows 11 PC, you will see a “Access your mobile device here” message instead of the actual content in the Start menu phone sidebar.
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