Can you not add shortcuts to the quicklinks area of the start menu?

Hi. Back in 7, my start menu had stuff pinned to it. I could click, say, Visual Studio and a submenu would slide out with recently opened projects on it so I could not only open it, but open a specific project.

I pinned VS to my Start Menu, but it doesn't have that functionality. I thought OK, well, maybe if it's on the left side of the start menu where the recently used stuff was. I can't figure out though how to get a shortcut over there (I believe that area is called "quick links"). I don't even have "recently used" anymore. I saw one can add folders from a list, but I don't need that. Right clicking the pinned VS in the "tiles" area doesn't give me that program specific context so that's not really useful.

Is it just not possible anymore?

Thanks. Hmm. I went to File Explorer, right clicked the Downloads folder and chose "Pin to Quick Access". It did not appear there though, and when I right clicked Downloads again it still said "Pin" not "Unpin" for quick access. I tried several folders, all behave the same. Do I have to enable it or something? I tried running the add pin to context reg file from your first link and it had no effect (pretty much what I expected since I already had that context option, just wanted to be thorough). ?

Ah, OK. So that list is dynamic aside from the pinned items? Cool. As to the start menu, just removed the username/userphoto at the top as I didn't want my last name floating around the net, that's it.