Start Menu, System Tray and Notifications

What is it?

This roadmap plans the Windows 11 Start menu, the system tray and the notification system. The Start menu gets a search box on top, a six by three grid of pinned apps with an All apps view, a Recommended list and a user and power footer, all loaded from real data. The tray gets an overflow chevron and a network, volume and battery cluster that opens Quick Settings. Notifications get toasts, a notification centre with a 100-entry history and per-app settings. It takes over the Start menu and tray work from the older desktop shell roadmap. None of its seven sections has shipped; a static Start menu runs today.

How does it work?

Today. The Start menu is drawn by desktop_draw_start_menu() in desktop.c, described in Desktop Shell Today. What already exists toward this roadmap:

Start menu (partial, sections 1 and 2). A fixed two-column acrylic panel, 450 by 344 pixels, at the left edge 10 pixels above the taskbar. The left column holds a search box that does not accept input, then About, All Programs and Terminal; the right column holds seven folder shortcuts and two footer buttons. Every entry is hard-coded.
What the entries do. Terminal opens a terminal window with a shell, About opens a small information window, and Power shuts the machine down at once through acpi_shutdown(), with no confirmation or restart option. All Programs, Settings and the seven folder shortcuts do nothing yet.
Opening. Only the Start button opens it. There is no Windows key handling (the keyboard driver recognises only Alt+F4 among shortcuts) and no open or close animation.
Tray and notifications (sections 4 to 7). No code. The right end of the taskbar holds only the clock.
Assets ready for use. The icon store already has search, power, info and chevron icons, and the generated theme tokens carry the spec sizes (a 640 by 720 menu, 364 pixel toasts), but no C file uses the tokens yet.

Planned design.

Data loading: pinned apps and All apps from the Start Menu folders, recent files from the Registry, the user name and picture.
Interaction: the Windows key, launching, a pin menu and a 250 millisecond rise animation.
Search: case-insensitive filtering of apps as the user types.
System tray: registered tray icons, an overflow chevron and the status cluster that opens Quick Settings.
Toasts: a kernel queue that kernel code and user programs share through a system call, stacked bottom right.
Notification centre: the history panel with a 100-entry Registry ring.
Notification settings: per-app switches, with Focus honoured.

flowchart LR
    SMF[Start Menu folders] --> SD[startmenu data]
    REG[Registry recents and pins] --> SD
    SD --> SM[Start menu panel]
    SM --> SR[search filter]
    KRN[kernel code] --> NQ[toast queue]
    APP[user program] -->|notify syscall| NQ
    NQ --> TO[toasts]
    NQ --> NC[notification centre history]

What are its interfaces?

Interface	Status
`desktop_draw_start_menu()`, `desktop_handle_click()`	Shipped (`desktop.h`)
`icon_get()`, `icon_get_by_name()`, `ICON_SEARCH`, `ICON_POWER`, `ICON_CHEVRON_*`	Shipped (`icon_store.h`)
`startmenu_*()`, `app_entry_t`, `recent_entry_t`	Planned, sections 1 to 3
`tray_register()`, `tray_unregister()`, `tray_icon_t`	Planned, section 4
`notify_send()`, `notify_send_action()`, the notification system call	Planned, section 5
`notify_center_()`, `notify_history_()`, `notify_settings_*()`	Planned, sections 6 and 7

How do I use it?

Boot the desktop (bash scripts/build.sh run), click the Start button and choose Terminal to open a shell. No test reaches the Start menu yet; the desktop suite (bash scripts/test.sh SUITE=desktop) covers the icon cache it draws from.

What is not implemented yet?

Start Menu Data Loading, Start Menu Interaction and Start Menu Search.
System Tray Icons.
Toast Notifications, Notification Center and Notification Settings.
A confirmed shutdown and restart choice belongs to section 2; the Power button today powers off immediately.

How does it compare with Windows 11 and Linux?

Windows 11 shows a centred Start menu with pinned apps and Recommended, searches as you type, and raises toasts through WinRT ToastNotification with actions and a notification centre. GNOME searches from the Activities overview, KDE uses Kickoff, and both send notifications over D-Bus through libnotify to a notification daemon. The plan follows Windows 11's layout and replaces the daemon with a kernel queue that kernel code and user programs share.