EdgeTile Creators review: Making custom tiles to spice up your Start Menu

EdgeTile Creators Lede Source: Sean En

Because Windows 10 supports so many unlike types of applications, y'all can stop up with a diverseness of Starting time Carte du jour icon styles on your PC. UWP apps appear 1 manner, Win32 programs appear some other manner, and progressive web apps (PWAs) accept their ain style. This results in an inconsistent Start Carte du jour with icons of diverse sizes and styles. EdgeTile Creators aims to set up that by allowing you lot to create custom tiles for just about anything. It works with files, folders, websites, and apps. It can even work with progressive web apps, but that takes more work than it should.

In addition to unifying the style of your Commencement Bill of fare tiles, EdgeTile Creators is a helpful tool to swap out logos y'all don't similar. For case, I adopt the sometime Slack logo over the new one, then I created a custom tile with the old Slack logo that opens up Slack.

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EdgeTile Creators

Bottom line: EdgeTile Creators allows you to brand custom Get-go Menu tiles for files, folders, programs, and websites. It works with progressive web apps, though it takes a bit of work.

Pros:

Allows you to create custom tiles.
Works with programs, files, and folders.
No splash screen later on clicking created tiles.

Cons:

Creating tiles for progressive web apps is complicated

What y'all'll love about EdgeTile Creators

Source: Windows Primal

I think it's a good matter that Microsoft is playing around with concepts for a refreshed Starting time Carte du jour. In my opinion, the entire matter requires a refresh. Icons from different types of apps prove up with dissimilar sizes and styles. It's far from elegant, and the concept shown off recently looks much better than what we accept at present. EdgeTile Creators can't change everything about your Outset Menu, only it can change the icons inside it.

Pinning files, folders, and websites to your Start Bill of fare is easier than pinning other content such as programs or PWAs. You can click to create a tile, pick the images y'all'd like, and then pick the path for the tile. You can besides customize aspects of each tile, including if it should bear witness text and the groundwork color you'd like.

When you click the tiles from the Starting time Menu, you don't see a splash screen. I didn't pause out a stopwatch, but they didn't seem to launch whatsoever slower than tiles created past Windows.

Information technology takes a bit of time, but with EdgeTile Creators, you can create tiles for all of your favorite content and customize the icon of the apps and programs you regularly use.

What you lot'll dislike well-nigh EdgeTile Creators

EdgeTile Creators Picking Pwa Source: Windows Central

While EdgeTile Creators can create custom tiles for programs, apps, and progressive spider web apps, information technology takes a lot of effort to make some of them work. To launch an executable file, you need to selection its path, and in some cases, you need to add together several arguments to make it piece of work.

I was frustrated by the setup process to make a progressive spider web app that's installed through Edge work with a custom tile. While you tin just create a tile that opens up a website, that website opens inside your default browser. I have several PWAs and other websites installed through Edge, including Disney+, Slack, AirTable, and WhatsApp. Creating a custom tile for each of these involved a complex process of finding the shortcut for the app, copying information technology'due south target into EdgeTile Creators, and cutting specific parts of the target data into dissimilar arguments.

The app needs a cleaner way to add programs and progressive spider web apps. People shouldn't have to dig through specific lawmaking within target data to make a custom tile. For example, please look at the text below that'south needed to make a custom tile for Disney+:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge_proxy.exe" --profile-directory=Default --app-id=mbjafbmjpcimpkkihihoideiofnoalmh

I doubt many people would know how to break that up to make it work with EdgeTile Creators. The answer is that you need to.

Take the first part in quotes, in this case, "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge_proxy.exe" and place information technology within Path. (Note, you take to remove the quotes)
Accept the last part of the line, including the two dashes into Launch Argument 1. In this case, it's "--app-id=mbjafbmjpcimpkkihihoideiofnoalmh"
Take the middle part, including the two dashes, and place information technology inside Launch Argument 2. In this case, it's "--profile-directory=Default"

I got in touch with the developer who walked me through the process, and I'll write up a detailed how-to soon, only that shouldn't be necessary. I sympathise fixing information technology might be difficult, but I call up the experience could exist improved.

Should you purchase EdgeTile Creators?

Source: Windows Central

It's tough to say if EdgeTile Creators is worth it right now. On the one hand, it allows you to customize all of your Start Menu icons, whether they lead to folders, files, apps, or websites. On the other hand, it takes some bad-mannered steps to make some of those work.

I initially reviewed EdgeTile Creators a few years ago, and at the time, gave it a four/5. But PWAs have come around and grown in popularity since so, so being able to pin them to the Showtime Menu in a way yous like has become more critical.

If you're tech-savvy enough to follow the steps to create the custom tiles y'all need, then EdgeTile Creators is worth $6, in my stance. You probably interact with the Showtime Menu quite a bit throughout the day, then making information technology look prissy could exist worth a bit of money and effort. If you want to brand a agglomeration of tiles for PWAs and don't want to deal with the steps in a higher place, I wouldn't grab EdgeTile Creators. Maybe an update could streamline the process and make it more worth it for coincidental users.

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EdgeTile Creators

A handy tool for customizing the Kickoff Menu

$6 at Microsoft Store

EdgeTile Creators allows you to make custom Start Carte tiles for files, folders, programs, and websites. It works with progressive web apps, though information technology takes a bit of work.

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