So, your first solution could be: to add an option to the appmenu that permits you to select a new boolean option “Always open menu on the starting page”?
I saw your screenshots and I’m not convinced by the color thing. It’s confusing because some people may not see the color difference and what you made gives me the feeling that every templates are focused. On a different but maybe related topic, it reminds me that after some bad naming choices, I made some mistakes trying to use a disposable (but in fact opening the disposable template). Is it possible that the name of the template and the name of the appvm you try to use are too close?
There are a lot of other solutions, like appending a “[Template]” tag after the name of the application, like the following screenshot but I can’t tell which one is appropriate.
There is already an option to open the appmenu on a “page”, like this:
qubes-app-menu -p 1
Maybe, with an option to select the tab and a way to use it with the following command, it could allow a user to customize the menu behavior without any settings?
gdbus call --session --dest org.qubesos.appmenu --object-path "/org/qubesos/appmenu" --method org.freedesktop.Application.Activate "{}"
Check this: