Windows 10: Oblytile alternative?

Pin the apps you want to your start menu and from there drag them onto your desktop, this will create a shortcut file (you can remove the apps from your start menu once you've made the shortcut). Copy the shortcut file anywhere you like (personally I'm using C:\TileCreator\Shortcuts) and then link to the shortcut like you would an exe file.

So for example for Microsoft Edge I'm using:

Edge:C:\TileCreator\Shortcuts\Microsoft Edge.lnk

 

Thank you my friend for the fast response but sadly TileCreator doesn't work for me so I'm using Better Start Menu and it only works with exe files not shortcuts.
Thanks anyhow.

 

Unfortunately shortcuts are the only way to do it because it wont allow you to run the .exe directly *Sad





The only way around this I can think of is basically what Hmroep posted earlier. Create a shortcut and then create a bat file to open the shortcut. If you don't know how to do this you can just create a new text document and change the .txt extention to .bat, then just open it up on notepad and paste this in...

@echo off
cd C:\Example Folder Where Shortcut File Is Located\
start Example.lnk
exit

...obviously with the example folder and example shortcut file changed to the actual location and name of your shortcut file. You can then use a free bat to exe convertor and change the bat file to an exe file. It should work in Better Start Menu then.

 

Thank you for this info but I need to figure out how to change a file extension before I can try it. If you can give me some pointers on how to do so, it would be appreciated. Thanks again!

 

Hi, although this is for Better StartMenu, below should work for any other app also.

To create a shortcut for Store apps, you can follow these directions. (I've also explained it on Better StartMenu)

• The store apps you've installed to your computer are listed in this folder:
  C:\Users\[YOUR_USER_NAME]\AppData\Local\Packages\
  C: is the drive that Windows 10 is installed. And you need to check "Hidden items" from View menu of the Windows Explorer to see the AppData folder.
• Now, in this folder, you can find the app you search for by looking to folder names. So for example, if we're looking for VLC app, by looking to folder names, one can understand that "VideoLAN.VLCforWindows8_paz6r1rewnh0a" is the one we're searching for. Now just go to Better StartMenu Helper app. Select "Run desktop app" as Action Type. And instead of selecting a file, just type this to the textbox:
  shell:Appsfolder\VideoLAN.VLCforWindows8_paz6r1rewnh0a!App
  That's it. You see the logic here. It's like that:
  "shell:Appsfolder\[FOLDER_NAME_OF_THE_APP]!App"
• 
  For some built-in store apps it might be like this one:
  "shell:Appsfolder\[FOLDER_NAME_OF_THE_APP]![FOLDER_NAME_OF_THE_APP_TILL_UNDERSCORE]"
  For example, for Xbox app, it should be:
  shell:Appsfolder\Microsoft.XboxApp_8wekyb3d8bbwe!Microsoft.XboxApp
• You can also try these in Run dialog (Windows Key + R)

 

Ok I finally got Tile Creator to work but for the life of me I can't get the tiles to resize to Large. Small and Medium work just fine but when I right click the tile to select size, the option for Large isn't available.
Anyone else have this issue?

 

Have you gotten the tiles to resize to anything besides small and medium? The Large option is non-existent.

 

Same. I think the application needs a bit more tweaking! *Sad

 

If you need to meticulously manage your Start Menu, it works. After applying tile, you can modify your ApprovedApps.config file to update paths. That's handy with URLS. The tile background color doesn't function, so a PNG with alpha will just appear over your selected Windows accent color. If this feature actually applied a background color, it could really use a color picker to select from an imported image instead of requiring you enter a hexadecimal value.

A clunky, half-rendered TileCreator window appears every time you click a link. Like a poorly designed splash screen to remind me that I used a buggy app to do something that Windows 10 should do natively?

One trick I discovered to create a custom tile for modern app:
1. Pin modern app to Start.
2. Drag modern app tile to a folder to create shortcut.
3. Use path to shortcut in ApprovedApps.config
4. Delete original modern app tile.

 

Some tile customisation done using 'Better StartMenu'. Not quite as polished as Oblytile yet but it's early days and it works OK. The tiles were made in an art program.

 

Well you can try using WinTileR. It allows you to fully customize everything on the tile. Size, image , background color, text. And it is also fast. You can find it on store.

 

Thanks!

 

I was just stopping by to answer my own ancient question about an Oblytile alternative, but it looks like you guys have already been talking about Tile Creator. Haven't had a chance to test it out myself yet, but will soon.

 

I would like to know how I can make a tile of a file.
All it does for me is launch TileCreator and asking for an App to open it. Don’t think I’m doing anything wrong.
I'm trying to open a pdf.
Had all my pdf-books nicely lined up with oblytile, and i loved it.

 

Pin more does every thing you want!
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