Windows 10 Anniversary Update to increase the number of Promoted Apps displayed

If you’re not a fan of the “promoted apps” feature in Windows 10 where you’re presented with ads for apps to try out from the Windows Store, then that’s one of the things you’re likely not to appreciate in the Windows 10 Anniversary update coming this summer. As Neowin has discovered, buried in a slide presentation from Microsoft’s WinHEC event, new machine owners or reinstallers are going to be presented with a larger number of promoted adds once the Anniversary Update goes live on July 29, 2016.

As Neowin points out, the number of static Microsoft apps that will be pinned to the Start Menu when you first start up Windows 10 on a new or reinstalled machine (the out-of-box-experience, or OOBE) is dropping from 17 down to 12. At the same time, the number of Start Menu spots allocated to promoted apps (which launch the Windows Store when clicked) will increase to 10, from the current five.

Microsoft’s explanation for the change in provided in the slide below:

That clutters things up a bit more than presently, and whether or not you like this change depends largely on whether or not you appreciate app suggestions. Who knows, maybe Microsoft will present you will an app that you wouldn’t otherwise know about–and the Promoted Apps are easy enough to uninstall. And certainly, helping developers promote their apps to users is an important step in growing the Windows Store and the Universal Windows Platform.

Let us know in the comments what you think of this impending Anniversary Update “feature.”

Update: Story clarified to indicate that this appears to apply to how OEMs can configure machines in the out of box experience, or OOBE, and how machines will look when Windows 10 is reinstalled from scratch. This isn’t how machines will appear once the Anniversary Update is applied, which was implied in the original version.