Add new tiles
You
can add tiles to the right side. They can be apps, folders, or disks
(but not individual files). You can use either of two techniques:
dragging or right-clicking.
The drag method. Drag the icon directly into the open Start menu—from the desktop, an open window, the “All apps” list, or the left side of the Start menu.
The right-click method.
Right-click an icon wherever fine icons are found: in a window, on the
desktop, in the “All apps” list, or on the left side. (Touchscreen:
Hold your finger down on the icon for a second.) From the shortcut
menu, choose Pin to Start.
Tip
In
the Edge browser, you can also add a Web page to the right side. With
the page open, click the … button at top right; choose Pin to Start.
In each case, the newly installed tile appears at the bottom of the right side. (You might have to scroll to see it.)
Make a tile stop blinking
Some of your right side tiles are live tiles—tiny
dashboards that display real-time incoming information. There, on the
Mail tile, you see the subject lines of the last few incoming messages;
there, on the Calendar tile, is your next appointment; and so on.
It has to be said, though: Altogether, a Start menu filled with blinky, scrolling icons can look a little like Times Square at midnight.
If you’re feeling quite caffeinated enough already, you might not want live tiles so much as, well, dead ones.
If you’d rather silence the animation of a live tile, right-click it. (Touchscreen: Hold your finger down on it, and then tap 
.) From the shortcut menu, choose “Turn live tile off.” The tile’s current information disappears, and the live updating stops.
To reverse the procedure, “right-click” an unmoving tile; from the shortcut menu, choose “Turn live tile on” instead.
Remove a tile
Open the Start
menu. Right-click the tile you want to eliminate. (Touchscreen: Hold
your finger down on it, and then tap the … button.) From the shortcut
menu, choose Unpin from Start. (You’re not actually discarding that
item—just getting its tile off the Start menu.)
Group your tiles
The
right side’s tiles aren’t scattered pell-mell; they present an
attractive, orderly mosaic. Not only are they mathematically nestled
among one another, but they’re actually grouped. Each cluster of related tiles can bear a name, like “Life at a glance” (Calendar, Mail, Weather…) or “Play and explore” (games, music, TV…).
But you can change those headings, or those groupings, and come up with new ones of your own.
The technique isn’t quite obvious, but you’ll get the hang of it (see Figure 2). It works like this:
Drag a tile to the very bottom of the existing ones. (Touchscreen: Hold your finger still for a second before dragging.)
When you drag far enough—the right side might scroll, but keep your finger down—a horizontal bar appears, as shown in Figure 2. That’s Windows telling you, “I get it. You want to create a new group right here.”
Drag the tile below the bar and release it.
Release
the tile you’re dragging; it’s now happily setting up the homestead. Go
get some other tiles to drag over into the new group to join it, if you
like. Build up the group’s population.
Click or tap just above your newly grouped tiles.
The words “Name group” appear.
Type a name for this group, and then press Enter.
Your group name is now immortalized.
By the way: Whenever you point to (or tap) the heading of any group, you may notice a little “grip strip” at the right
side. If you like, you can drag that strip up or down to move the
entire group to a new spot among your existing groups. (Or
horizontally, if you have a multicolumn right side.)
At any point, you can rename a group (click or tap its name; type). To eliminate a group, just drag all of its tiles
into other groups, one at a time. When the group is empty, its name
vanishes into wherever withered, obsolete tile groups go.
