Windows 10: Customize Start Menu for Pinned apps and get Live Tile effect

Hi there,


Thanks for looking at my question. I am an avid user of the start menu and it's features, and I've been trying to customize it. However, I find that despite the excellent features and functionality that the built-in Apps are able to bring to the Start Menu, there doesn't seem to be much documentation on how to use them together.


Just to clarify, I'm only looking for information on the first party built-in apps that came with Windows 10, ie. Alarm & Clock, Calendar & Mail, People etc. on how they work with the start menu, and in particular:


1. For these built-in apps, what functions can I pin to the start menu other than the Main App itself as a Tile?

eg. In Mail, you can pin individual accounts or any folder in an account as a Tile

In Groove Music, you can pin individual playlists, albums and artists as Tiles


2. What Apps will give a Live Tile effect on the Start Menu and under what condition?

eg. In Mail, An active tile/live tile will display the sender and first few words of the latest unread mail for: all newmail if the App is pinned, new mail arriving for an account, if an account is pinned, or new mail arriving in a filder, if a folder is pinned.

In Alarm & Clock, pinning a particular city in the "Clock" panel, will create a Live Tile that shows that city's current time.

I've looked around quite a bit for a page telling how all of the built-in apps work with the Start Menu with no success so far, and it's been a bit of a trial and error on figuring out how everything works. Perhaps I missed something and would be delighted if someone here would be able to point me in the right direction.


Cheers,

GT.





***Modified title from: Looking for information on what functions or subsections of the built-in apps can be pinned to the start menu and what apps will give a live tile effect***

:)

 

How to customize pinned Start Menu icon?

OK, I have a comparable shortcut I added to Windows Accessories to start IE with no add-ons. It is in:
C:\Users\<my name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories
and is an ordinary shortcut to iexplore.exe with some parameters:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -extoff

It originally showed the default IE icon on the list of All apps on the left Start menu. I pinned it to Start and it showed the same IE icon. I then did 'More > Open file location' and gave it a different icon. As you can see, both the All apps menu and the Tile show the custom icon now.





This was done with version 1607, what version does Winver say you have? It may be that this doesn't work on earlier versions, the Start menu had a lot of changes from that of 1511.

I suggest you try changing the icon to something else, then back to your preferred icon after you have pinned it to Start. This may kick Windows into showing the correct icon on the Tile.

 

Widows 10 live tiles customize.

Is there any chance to customize image of the live tile of web sites pinned to start menu? All pinned tiles looks the same with edge logo on it.

 

Custom start menu tile


I just installed the latest version of Dropbox (desktop, not app) and realised that they are able to have a nice looking start menu tile. Any ideas on how to replicate this effect for my other start menu shortcuts?




For instance, the Dropbox icon doesn't look too small, and the tile has a blue blackground colour that is different from my Windows accent colour.