I cannot explain how much I do not want to see this green dot and “New!” text in my application launcher. Rather than be a passionate contributor like you, I have regrettably become a slave to the Big Tech industry - But one thing I can provide is insight into why operating systems like iOS and Windows have this noise: Impact driven development People need to justify their work on a continuous basis, with the upside of promotions and downside of layoffs. They add the most useless feature...
I assume youre talking about W11?
Because the “Show recently added apps” setting is third option in the start menu settings on W10.
The main issue is UX imo. On Windows 11, it’s “5 clicks”, but you have to open the settings app and find the setting two submenus deep. On KDE, it’s right click > configure application launcher > toggle setting > apply.