Windows 8: The Missing Manual

Chapter 2. Customizing the Lock, Login & Start Screens

As you know from Chapter 1, you pass through three Windows 8 screens before you can actually start getting any work done: the Lock screen, the Login screen, and the Start screen.

Since you’ll be spending so much time facing these bastions of modern software design, you’ll be glad that you can tweak them to your liking—or, in some cases, eliminate them altogether. Here’s the scoop.

Adding or Removing App Tiles

The tiles on the Start screen don’t represent all of your programs—only the ones to which you want quick access (just like the old Start menu). But there will come a time when you want to add a new program’s tile here.

Installing a new app’s tile to the Start screen is called pinning it. You can pin either TileWorld apps or Windows desktop programs to the Start screen.

And apps are just the beginning. Eventually, you’ll discover that you can also pin tiles for Web sites, playlists, photo albums, people from your contacts list, mail accounts or mailboxes, icons from Desktop Windows, and more.

But first things first: pinning apps.

Adding App Tiles to the Start Screen

Windows 8 offers two ways to pin TileWorld apps to the Start screen: from the All Apps list, or from the Search screen.

Pinning from the All Apps list

One way to find the app you want to pin is to use the All Apps screen, as follows:

1. Open the App bar.

   Touchscreen: Swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen.

   Mouse: Right-click a blank spot on the Start screen.

   Keyboard: Press ...