Customized Start Screen in Windows 8

Windows 8 comes with a new UI called Start Screen that shows us all the applications in the form of tiles. Some of them are Live tiles that are being updated periodically. So, this article shows you many options that enable you to customize your Start Screen in Windows 8.

There are many options that can be used to customize or change the default behavior of the Start screen in Windows 8, such as look and feel, Tile size and the website launcher of the Start Screen.

Resize Tiles

If you are familiar with Windows 8 then you will see that some of the app tiles are a small square shape and others are a rectangular shape on the Start Screen. But, you can easily change the default size of these tiles as you want.



Just follow use this procedure.

Step 1

Right-click on the tile you want to make smaller or larger in size.

Step 2

Use the Smaller or Large button that appears at the bottom app bar.



Now your tile will look as:



Pin Websites to Start Screen.

You can also pin shortcuts to folders and other applications to the Start Screen. Similarly you can also pin a website to the Start Screen. I will try this feature only on Internet Explorer, but it works with other browsers also.



This will create a tile on the Start Screen with the respective site.



Turn Live Tile On or Off.

As you know some of the tiles on the Start Screen are Live tiles that give you updated information periodically. For Example: Sports, Weather applications. But, you can also disable this behavior of an update tile.

Right-click on the tile you want to disable live updates for.

Click on the button Turn live tile on/off.



There are some common ways to customize your Start Screen apps if you don't want to use them.