This takes the cake as the most braindead thing I've ever seen the Start Menu do

Microsoft as usual trying to make a Swiss Army knife where none of the tools work as intended

Is everybody really out there doing arithmetic in their start menu search bar? Calc.exe is a click or hotkey away.

Calc.exe is a click or hotkey away.

The Start Menu is already there, no hotkey setup required. Plus, I can close it with a single key too. It's simply more convenient.
- If you say so. I think having to wait for the latency of the web search to come back would drive me up the wall if I tried your method.
  
  Win+number row are hotkeys for your taskbar favorites. No explicit setup is required other than having your taskbar favorites ordered how you want them. Pressing the hotkey will open the program if it's closed, focus the program if it's in the background, or minimize the program if it's focused.
To this day, I still launch the calculator with win+R then "calc" enter.

Basically muscle memory at this point
- For me it's win "calc" enter.
- This is also a quick and easy option tbh
Neither option is convenient for me. So I just have a calculator next to me just in case.
...yes? The spotlight/quick search tool is stupid useful. Everything is just a quick alt-space and a type away

I've been using Synapse on Linux for years and Windows powertoys is way better than this nonsense (which is super confusing because that's also an official Microsoft programme. Why do they have a superior version of their search that you have to seperately download?)
It's really easy for one offs.
- pin calc to taskbar. it's a click away and makes more sense than searching for an arithmetic answer.
Since I pretty much always have a browser open I just use the search bar to do it unless I know I'm doing multiple operations, then it's off to the pinned calculator shortcut
I prefer to use my phone, shout out Calculator++ https://f-droid.org/packages/org.solovyev.android.calculator/
Personally I use ueli for everything
- That looks very very similar to PowerToys Run, I wonder if they're related?

Not to mention it takes like 10 seconds to load and has completely random predictions

Nah. Most brain dead thing it does is when you search for something, and it brings up no results, so you remove the last letter and your results pop up.

Or when it refuses to show something you know exists on the computer until you enter the exact full file path
- That's why I use Flow Launcher with the Everything plugin (now integrated on the Explorer).
  
  Everything is an absolute godsend to deal with Windows' shitty indexer.
Or you press enter to open it, and instead the list changes and it opens something unrelated
This happens to me on Instagram and it makes me want to commit atrocities.

It's a start menu, not a calculator.

Oh wait, it's a web search?

It is showing a suggested search on the left AND the calculator with the right operation and result on the right. I'd call it confusing at best, but looks like it's doing what it's supposed to imo
- Except it 'recommended' you add a zero and did it for you, changing the equation you asked it to do.

i like it that KRunner on KDE does that out of the box too, except that it doesn't connect to the internet as a first suggestion, so it's an upgrade :3

Same! Especially convenient cuz I've mapped it to my Windows key so it's my main way to launch programs and stuff
- fyi KRunner is also in the default main menu's search bar btw :3

This comes from your search results. I just tried it, and for me it answers what you'd expect. I suspect you use a search system that's either bing, based on bing, or sends queries to bing, and as a result of that it assumed you wanted to search for this specific thing.

Mind you, that makes it no less ridiculous since on the web, Bing can recognize that you put in a math query and answers it without wanting to autocomplete it. It's still bad, just in a slightly more specific way. 😂

I did just try this again on my work laptop and it searched correctly. But the 2nd "search the web" suggestion still added a 0. Maybe I had searched that by accident by hitting enter after typing it (as it still opens Edge/Bing annoyingly).
- Disable Bing in the search box on your personal computer. If you're performing searches on your desktop, even if you don't select a web search, it's still being sent to Microsoft and stored.
- Why the fuck do you think using search is an adequate replacement for a calculator? This is dumb.
I suspect the have the . and , switched in their language preferences, so the dot would just an arbitrary separator.

Use PowerToys Run instead. The Start menu is dead to me now.

I have it installed already, and I'd switch to using it in a heartbeat if it could replace the Start Menu in a way that didn't break things. I often open the Start Menu purely to show the taskbar over fullscreen games in order to switch to something else. If Run did that (and if binding it to the Windows key didn't break other shortcuts), it would be perfect for me.

Edit: I stand corrected. It appears that Run does sometimes show the taskbar, but it seems inconsistent.
- Well, I use Powertoys Run for everything except that one thing (a way to break out of full-screen games). I'd consider that switched, since you're using that to start everything.
  
  I don't even shutdown via Start anymore.
  
  Oh, and the other reason to use Start menu is to start Powertoys it doesn't restart after an update. xD
- I often open the Start Menu purely to show the taskbar over fullscreen games in order to switch to something else.
  
  Uh, Alt+Tab exists.
Can you map it to the Windows key?
- Yes you can. You can even use PowerToys Keyboard Manager to remap keys.
  
  I’ve mapped the right Apps/Menu key to Win(left) and mapped Win(left) to Alt+Space to open PowerToys Run, effectively replacing Win(left) with Run entirely.

not sure about windows 11 but in wkndows 10 you can turn it into fully local search menu without any bing crap and web searches with some tweaks
this also makes it open and search without any delay for some reason... Really makes it usable again

Do you have a link to a guide for this?
- Idk about that but you can use EdgeDeflector and the somewhat incorrectly named EdgeRemover. If you install both, you can redirect all MS Edge actions to your default browser, and Bing search queries to another engine of your choice. Works as of September 2023. (Or install Linux.)
- don't remember how i did it, afaik OOSU10 has an option for that
  
  EDIT: Microsoft removed the old group policy (non-retroactively; that's how i did it) so registry is the only way to disable web search now
  
  https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/disable-windows-web-search
  
  it still works on win11? huh...

Is this Windows?

Yeah, it's the Start Menu in Windows 11 (though I think the same kind of thing will happen on Windows 10 too)
- What do you think of alternative start menus, such as Open-Shell?
- Thanks. I use Windows so little I didn't at all recognise it. And my KDE start menu has had this functionality for a really long time but actually works properly lol so doubly confused if I was looking at a KDE menu themed in a weird way.

Click is more than Windows key 🤷‍♂️

Wow you found a bug. Definitely don't see those in Linux 🙄