Have Windows 8.1? Pin the Windows Phone Central Live Tile to your Start screen!

If you’re like us, you’ve spent a good chunk of the day updating your PCs, tablets and Ultrabooks to the brand spanking new (and spectacular) Windows 8.1 OS. If you did, pat yourself on the back because we have a small, but cool, bonus for you troopers: The Windows Phone Central Live Tile.

Sure, it’s not our official RT app, which is still in the works (you can bug Jay about it), but as runner up you can use the new Internet Explorer 11 “pin to start” feature, which will give you four Tile sizes: small, medium, large or wide. The tile is also Live, pulling directly from our site—think of it as another cool way to keep up to date on your favorite Windows Phone and Microsoft news.

The Tile will update every 30 minutes, giving you a peek at what’s new on the site!

Instructions

  1. Make sure IE11 is set as the default browser—at least to pin, you can always switch it later. To choose your default browser, just type in “default programs” on the Start screen and launch the settings.
  2. Launch IE11 in Metro mode (not desktop) and head to www.wpcentral.com
  3. Tap the Star icon (for favorites)
  4. Hit the Pin button
  5. Rename the Tile or just keep ‘WPCentral’
  6. Choose Tile size (you can always change it later)

And that’s it!

The tile should refresh with our direct news feed and depending on the size you chose, it will have a slightly different layout. Oh, and  if you’re a fan of our other sites on Mobile Nations, including Android Central, iMore or CrackBerry, those too will be getting this feature soon!

Enjoy, from the Windows Phone Central team!

*If you’ve already been using the Live Tile, you should unpin and re-pin today as we switched from a slow RSS feed to a direct feed to our site

Windows Phone Central Live Tile 8.1

1. Hit the Favorites/Star button, then Pin icon

Windows Phone Central Live Tile 8.1

2. Select Title and Tile size

Windows Phone Central Live Tile 8.1

3. Move Tile to desired location, it should update with site feed every 30 mins

Windows Phone Central Live Tile 8.1

4. You can always resize the Tile later

Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.