Customizing the Start Screen

Although the Lock Screen might be the first thing you see when you start Windows 8, you’ll certainly spend a lot more time working on the Start screen, so that’s where we’ll start our tour of the tools and settings you can use to customize the interface.

Rearranging tiles

Figure 12.1 shows a portion of a typical Windows 8 Start screen. As the figure shows, the tiles on the Start screen are grouped. You can rearrange the tiles on the Start screen, moving them within a group, moving them to other groups, or even creating new groups.

FIGURE 12.1 Tiles on the Windows 8 Start screen

Moving tiles within a group is easy. If you are using a touch device, tap and hold the icon until a checkmark appears near the upper-right corner of the tile; then simply drag it into its new position. If you are using a mouse, right-click the tile to make the checkmark appear, and then left-click and drag the tile to its new position.

Adding and removing tiles

As you might expect, you can customize the tiles that appear on the Start screen, adding and removing tiles as desired. For example, you might add the documents or websites you use most often, and remove the apps you seldom or never use. The following sections explain how to add and remove tiles from the Start screen as well as the Windows taskbar.

Adding tiles

Apps that you add from the Windows Store are automatically pinned to the Start screen. When you install other apps, Setup generally adds one or more tiles to the Start screen for those, as well.

If you have removed a tile and want to add it back, or need to add a tile for an app that wasn’t added automatically, you can easily do so. To add an app using the mouse, right-click the Start screen to show the App Bar, and then click All Apps. With a touch device, slide up from the bottom of the display and then tap All Apps.

Locate the app that you want to add to the Start screen, and then either right-click or swipe down on the icon. When the App Bar appears (see Figure 12.2), click or tap Pin To Start. If you also want to add the app to the Windows taskbar, open the App Bar again for the app and click or tap Pin To Taskbar.

FIGURE 12.2 Pin items to the Start screen using the App Bar.

You add a document to the Start screen in a similar way. Locate the document from the desktop, right-click or tap and hold, and choose Pin To Start. To add a website to the Start screen from the Windows 8 version of Internet Explorer (IE), open the page in IE and then open the App Bar by either right-clicking or sliding up from the bottom of the screen. Then, click or tap the Pin To Start button.

To add a web shortcut from the desktop version of IE, open the page in IE and then choose Tools, Add Site to Start Screen.

Removing tiles

As mentioned earlier, Setup typically adds tiles to the Start screen when you install an app. Over time, the Start screen gets cluttered with apps you probably use seldom, if at all. You can certainly uninstall apps you don’t need, but in some cases you might prefer to simply remove the app’s tile(s) from the Start screen. For example, maybe it’s a utility app that runs in the background that you never need to open.

Removing a tile is easy. If using a mouse, right-click the tile and then in the App Bar, click Unpin From Start. If using a touch device, swipe down on the tile to open the App Bar, and then tap Unpin From Start.

Resizing tiles

Although some tiles have a fixed size, you can change others from small to large or vice-versa. This is particularly handy for live tiles for which you want to provide more space to display their live data. To change the size of a tile, right-click or swipe down on the tile to open the App Bar. Click either Smaller or Larger, as appropriate.

Working with live tiles

In the Windows 8 interface, live tiles are ones that display data dynamically. Examples include the Weather, Mail, and Finance tiles. For example, Finance shows stock price information for stocks that you have added to your watch list.

You can control whether a live tile–capable app shows data or not. For example, if you don’t use the Weather app much, you might not want it showing data. To turn live tiles on or off, right-click or swipe down on the tile to open the App Bar. Then, click or tap either Turn Live Tile Off or Turn Live Tile On (see Figure 12.3), depending on the current state of the tile.

FIGURE 12.3 Use the App Bar to turn live tiles on or off.

Working with groups

You’ve already seen that the Start screen groups tiles, and that you can move tiles from one group to another. Groups enable you to group together tiles on the Start screen in whatever way makes sense to you. For example, you might group the items that you use the most into one group, with websites or documents in another.

The section “Rearranging Tiles” earlier in this chapter explained how to move tiles from one group to another, or within the same group. But there are other actions you can take in regards to groups, including creating new groups and naming them.

Creating groups

To create a new group, simply drag a tile to the vertical space between two groups, or to the left or right edge of the Start screen. Windows displays a translucent vertical bar to indicate that it is going to create a new group when you release the tile. Release the tile, and then drag other tiles as desired into the group.

Rearranging groups

You can also change the order of groups on the Start screen. To work with a group as a whole, you first need to zoom out to see the entire Start screen. To do so with a mouse, click the Summary View icon at the bottom right of the display. On a touch device, simply pinch the Start screen to zoom out and view the Summary view (see Figure 12.4). With the Start screen at the Summary view, click or tap on a group and then drag it to the desired location.

FIGURE 12.4 Use the Summary view to manage tile groups.

Naming groups

Although groups by default do not have a name, you can assign a name to a group, if desired. This is useful if you have a lot of tiles on the Start screen and want an additional visual cue as to what each group contains.

To name a group, first display the Summary view as described in the previous section. Then, right-click or swipe down on a group to open the App Bar. Click or tap Name Group, type a name in the resulting text box, and then click or tap Name to apply the name. To remove a name, repeat the process and delete the text from the text box; then tap or click Name. Figure 12.5 shows a group with a name.

FIGURE 12.5 You can name tile groups.

Clearing Live Data

Over time, as you use live tiles to display data, you might want to clear the data the tiles show. For example, if you’re working in a public place such as on an airplane, you might not want your data displayed on the Start screen. Windows 8 makes it easy to clear that data.

Display the Start screen, and then open the Charms Bar and click or tap Settings. Click Tiles in the resulting Settings menu, and then click or tap Clear (see Figure 12.6).

FIGURE 12.6 The Tiles menu

Allocating storage for Tile updates

Live tiles display data, and as you might expect, that data needs to be stored somewhere. The more live tiles you use, the more data is created. By default, Windows 8 will store up to 50MB of live tile data, and when that storage is used, your live tiles will let you know there are updates available but won’t display them. To increase the amount of storage allocated for live tile data, open the Charms Bar, click or tap Settings, and then click or tap Tiles on the Settings menu. Use the Data Used For Tile Updates drop-down to specify the amount of storage allocated for live tile data.

Adding administrative tools to the Start screen

One final change you might want to make to the Start screen is to add the Windows 8 administrative tools to it. These tools include Performance Monitor, Task Manager, Optimize Drives, and other tools for managing your device. If you use these tools often, or simply want quick access to them, you can add them to the Start screen. To do so, open the Charms Bar, click or tap Settings, click or tap Tiles in the Start Settings menu, and set the Show Administrative Tools option to Yes.

Changing Start Screen Background and Color

Another change you can make to the Start screen is to change the background color and/or choose a background for the Start screen. To change either of these properties, open the Charms Bar, click or tap Settings, and then click or tap Change PC Settings.

In the PC Settings app, click or tap Personalize, and then click or tap Start Screen to display the options shown in Figure 12.7. Choose a background from the options provided, or choose the solid color if you prefer no background image. Use the color selector to choose a color for the Start screen.

FIGURE 12.7 Use the Personalize item to choose color and background image.