Select multiple tiles in Windows 8

04 Sep 2012 15:37 | metro win8 windows

Microsoft's next major operating system will be released to the world on October 26th this year. Windows 8's new Metro interface presents itself as soon as you sign in, and whilst it looks amazing it may take many people a while to get used to.

This will be the first of many quick helpful tips aimed towards improving the way you work with Windows 8. My aim is that by posting these articles up here for you to read, you will learn most of the basics before the new OS is released in October.

Windows 8 Tile Clutter

Once you start installing older Windows 7-style applications, your Start screen will begin to fill up with useless icons that you'd rather hide away. By selecting multiple tiles at once, you can remove them all from your screen very quickly.

Selecting tiles

Touch screen: Swipe down on any tile with your finger to select it.
Mouse & keyboard: Right-click on any tile to select it.

As soon as you select a tile the application bar pops up at the bottom of the screen, giving you a selection of actions to make with that tile. You can change the tile's size, configure whether it shows live updates, or uninstall an application straight from the Start screen.

If you then proceed to select another tile, the options for the first application are hidden and only actions that can be made to all of the tiles at once are shown:

Unpin from Start: Remove (unpin) all selected tiles from the Start screen.
Clear selection: Any tiles that you have selected will no longer be selected.

These context-sensitive actions are displayed on the left side of the application bar. The right side of the application bar is for actions that do not directly relate to what you have selected.

In the screenshot displayed below, "All apps" is one such action. It shows a summary list of every application installed on your computer, much like the old Start menu. You can use this list to pin tiles back to the Start screen after you have unpinned them.