How to create custom live tiles for desktop apps on Windows 10 Start

With the arrival of the new Windows 10 Start menu, many users who upgrade from Windows 7 are discovering the enormous customization possibilities that it delivers thanks to the live tiles or squares that we can anchor on it.

However, one problem we face when adding apps there is that Desktop app tiles tend to be uglier than desktop app tiles. Useful for modern (store) apps, as they don&39;t have a special layout for Windows 10 Start."

The good news is that third-party tools have been released that allow you to fix this, and assign custom tiles to desktop programs. Next we will explain step by step how to use one of these tools.

To begin, we must download the application TileCreator by clicking on this link (we must wait for a window to open automatically Windows Store).

Then you have to download the file TileCreator.exe. Once downloaded, right click on it, select Run as administrator, and click OK>"

The above step is used to create a directory in C:\ that resolves a restriction that Windows 10 applies to live tiles.If all goes well, we should see something like the following screenshot in the C:\TileCreator\ directory(to verify it, we can click on Start, there type C:\TileCreator\, and press Enter).

Now, inside the directory C:\TileCreator you have to open the file ApprovedApps.config using thenotepad To do this, right-click on it, and select Open with > Notepad (if Notepad does not appear among the options, select Choose another application>."

What we will see next is a list where we must add the name and path of all the applications for which we want to create a custom tileIn the following steps it will be shown how to get the path of the applications, so in the meantime you have to keep this window open.

In my case I have already added a Spotify tile. Now I'm going to add another Adobe Lightroom. You can add whatever you want, but in any case you have to first get the application path This can be done by searching for the app in the Start menu (press Start > type app name), right-clicking on the app once it appears, and then selecting ">.

A window will be displayed in which the original file of the application will be selected. To copy your route, click on the Home tab>"

We return to the notepad window, and there we write a new line with the following structure: : (without the square brackets). We can paste the route by pressing the CTRL + V keys, since we copied it in the previous step.
Two important details: 1) The path will be pasted with quotes, you have to remove them. 2) Write the name of the application without spaces (eg AdobeLightroom instead of Adobe Lightroom). Once both things are verified we can save and close the file.

Later, we must reopen the app TileCreator (the one we downloaded from the store). It should be in the Recently Added section>"

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Once inside TileCreator you have to write the name that we used for the application in the notepad (it must be exactly the same which we will write in the ApprovedApps.config file). This is done in the Approved Apps Key field."
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Then you have to select the image you want to use in the live tile using the button Choose Image(s) (we can use different images for each tile size but it is not necessary). To search for images that serve as live tiles we can use Google, or icon repositories like this one."

Finally, we click on Pin Tile .
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And voila, the new tile will appear in the bottom right corner of the Start menu From there we can change its size, or relocate it. What yes, if we already had a classic tile for the application before, it will not be automatically removed, but we must manually unpin it by right-clicking on it, and then Unpin from Start> "

That's right, there are a lot of steps for something that should be simpler, but at least it's enough to do this procedure just once, and with that we will forever have customized and more attractive live tiles for each desktop app that we have anchored in the Start.

Via | Windows Central

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