Microsoft last week officially released its newest operating system, Windows 8, which is a radical departure from previous versions of Windows. My colleagues have been writing about many of its unique features in-depth, such as How to Refresh or Reset Your PC and How to Dual Boot Windows 7 and 8, but here, I am concerned with only one aspect: the organization of tiles.
Even though I am not new to Windows by any stretch—it's an operating systems with which I've developed a deep and complicated love-hate relationship since the mid 1990s—I have been struggling with not only how to arrange the tiles on Windows 8 thematically, but also physically how to do it.
That's all to say that this article takes a pretty elementary approach. If you consider yourself a Windows power user, stop reading here and instead check out Michael Muchmore's Super Guide to Windows 8.
Windows 8 Tile Organization
Background. Windows 8's user interface looks remarkably different from prior versions of Windows. Instead of clicking on desktop icons to get to your favorite programs, you'll find "tiles" on a new Start screen. You can rearrange these tiles, just as you can organize app icons on most smartphones.
Download and install apps before organizing existing ones. Before you start rearranging the placement of tiles to your liking, I recommend downloading a few apps first. The reason? Some apps are one-by-one squares, while others are rectangular and twice as wide as they are tall. See the image above. Notice how the tiles for Wikipedia, StumbleUpon, and Goals are twice as wide as any of the others. You can shrink a rectangular tile to the square dimensions to make it fit more neatly if you like (which I'll explain how to do on the next page).
Plopping a double-wide tile into an organized set can throw the whole thing off. So try to get a bunch of tiles on your plate before you start moving them around.
Tip: Any time you can't find something, try hovering on the right side of the screen, or swiping from right to left on a touch-screen tablet or PC, or use Windows key+C on the keyboard to uncover "Charms," which notably include the Search button.)
Organize by themes or workflow? Some people like to organize their apps by theme, grouping together programs that accomplish similar feats, but I think a better rationale is to group by workflow.
On all my devices, I tend to cluster apps according to how often I use them and which ones I use in conjunction with others.
Methods for arranging tiles on the screen. There are many ways to organize your apps, and I'll explain three of them here.
First I'll share the way I do it. I put high-use apps onto "hotspot" sections of the screen, or areas where I am likely to put my fingers or reach with my mouse first. For me, these areas tend to be in the lower left and upper right corners. For many touch screen users, the hotspots are vertical areas along the left and right sides, near your thumbs when you're holding the device.
Another way to order your apps is to slot them by use in grid formation, left to right and top to bottom.
A third solution: Cluster by workflow. For example, set all your office tiles together, maybe adding the "print management" tile to that group, too. Another example would be to group leisure apps, like games and Web discovery tools, together but also out of sight so that you're not distracted by them when you're trying to be productive.
You can arrange your tiles however you like, of course.
Which brings us to this question: How do you physically move tiles around the Windows 8 Start screen? It's not completely intuitive on a touch screen device.
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