Alex Fazio, a software developer, recently pointed this out on social media site X. His observation was: The Windows 11 Start Menu adds quite an unreasonable amount of load onto the PC processor every single time it is opened. In a sense, it is making the PC run harder than it probably ought to, considering the simple task.
But why should this happen? Fazio suspects that the technology Microsoft decided to use for building this core aspect of the O.S. may be the problem. Reportedly, the Start Menu in Windows 11 has been built using a framework called React Native. This tool affords developers the usage of web technologies such as JavaScript to build applications that behave like native ones on systems like Windows.
tfw you find out that the start menu in windows 11 is literally a react native application that causes a spike in cpu usage every time you press the start button pic.twitter.com/UIGDQ9MUMm
— alex fazio (@alxfazio) May 25, 2025
Using React Native can definitely speed up the development process, making it that much easier to create and update software. With these advantages, however, we sometimes pay with performance disadvantages. Think of it as many added layers; while every added layer makes its own contribution, it can mean the application is not as light and fast as it would have been had it been built directly using "native" tools.
What this means is that React Native converts web-based interface code into something Windows can run, almost like any other standard EXE file. While brilliant, this multi-step approach sometimes leads to such performance glitches.
Fazio alone is not the only one with this concern. Other users on X joined the bandwagon to corroborate similar experiences. Processor usage spikes have been reported- sudden spikes sometimes even between 30 and as high as 70-simply for accessing the Start Menu. This seems mostly noticeable with the "recommended applications" panel opened, with some users claiming they see this spike nearly every other time they open the menu.
Notably, there has been no comment on this from Microsoft so far. So while interesting, we await the official remark or a fix from the company.
For now, if your Windows 11 PC feels a bit sluggish when you hit the Start button, this might explain why. It would be interesting to watch how this proceeds on and whether or not Microsoft would act on these performance issues.
