How To Change Tile Color In Windows 10

Y'all can easily customize the Windows 10 Start menu.
Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET

Are you unimpressed with the Windows ten ($148 at Amazon) Start menu? If you have notwithstanding to cover its colorful tiles and menus, then y'all're missing out, particularly if you have a Windows tablet or touchscreen laptop. (If you've been holding out on updating your computer, you tin still learn how to download Windows 10 free hither.) With a bit of customization, yous tin can form the Start menu into something useful.

Rapidly, let's break downward how the Outset menu is organized. It'southward divided into 3 sections.

The narrow console on the left features icons for important menu items that vary depending on your settings (more than on this later), including your account, settings, and power options. These icons are unlabeled by default, just if yous demand assistance figuring out which is which, you can tap or click the menu push at the acme of this department (looks like three horizontal lines) to reveal labels for each icon.
The middle (just however mostly left) panel houses a list of all your applications, starting with those you recently added at the top and and so an alphabetical
The large panel on the right contains the colorful tiles in sections labeled as Create, Play, Explore and so on.

Now that you know the lay of the Start menu state, let'south get to the ways in which y'all tin can customize it.

Customize the far-left console

The far-left panel of the Offset bill of fare can have a minimum of two icons (your account icon and the power options icon) and a maximum of 12 icons. Y'all tin customize the icons that appear by opening the Settings menu and going to Personalization > Start > Choose which folders announced on Start. Here, you lot can toggle on/off the post-obit icons: File Explorer, Settings, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos, HomeGroup, Network and Personal folder.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

Full-screen Start or not

The full-screen Starting time menu is the default bill of fare if you're using a tablet, while the partial-screen Start menu is the default if you have a desktop or laptop. If you want the full-screen experience on a PC, go toSettings >Personalization > Start and toggle on Use Start full screen. And on a tablet, you tin can go toSettings > Arrangement > Tablet fashion and choose which mode -- desktop or tablet -- you want your device to commencement in.

Change the color

To change the color of your Start card, Start screen, taskbar and window borders, go toSettings >Personalization > Colors > Evidence colour on Outset, taskbar, and activeness center. Plow this option on and pick the accent colour you'd like to use from the options above. If y'all'd like your Start bill of fare to be transparent-ish, you tin can also turn on Brand start, taskbar, and action center transparent.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

Pin and unpin tiles

To pin an app to the right panel of the Showtime carte as a tile, discover the app in the heart-left panel of the Start bill of fare and right-click it. Click Pin to Start, or drag and drop it into the tile section of the Start menu. To unpin a tile, correct-click the tile and click Unpin from Outset.

Move and resize tiles

To resize a tile, right-click on it and applyResize choice to option a size. Depending on the tile/app, you will exist able to choose small, medium, wide or large. Most tiles will only be able to exist sized to pocket-size or medium, simply native Windows apps such equally Edge or Maps will exist able to be sized to wide or big. To movement a tile, click or tap it, hold information technology, and drag it to some other role of the Showtime carte du jour.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

Become wide

If your Offset menu is starting to feel crowded, you can go far wider by going toSettings >Personalization > Start and toggling on Prove more tiles.

Create Outset menu folders

Even with an extra-wide Beginning bill of fare, it can beginning to experience chaotic if yous accept added a bunch of tiles to it. Every bit with the thumbnails littering your desktop, yous can organize Beginning menu tiles into folders. Just drag on tile on top of some other tile to create a folder of agreeing tiles. It'll feel very familiar to iPhone ($499 at Apple tree) owners who pride themselves on their neat and orderly drove of app folders, though there'due south no jiggling involved.

Edit the tile sections

In Windows 10 (like Windows 8/8.1), y'all can dissever your live tiles into different categories. To create a new category, click a tile, hold information technology and drag it to the bottom of the Offset card until a solid bar shows up. Drib the tile below this bar, and your tile will end up in its own little section, which yous can name.