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How to Replace the Boring Stock Tiles in Windows 8 with Your Own Custom Designs

Oct 16, 2012 08:53 PM

Creative software icons from Adobe, including Premiere Pro, Illustrator, and InDesign.

The new Windows 8 is set to launch on October 26th, and developers and early adopters are still getting used to the new interface. Windows 8 borrows a lot of its functionality and look from the touchscreen-friendly Windows phones. As with Windows phones, Windows 8 uses the now ubiquitous tiles as part of the new Metro Desktop.

Windows 8 Start Menu showing various app tiles.

Image Credit hothardware.com

These tiles, much like the vintage iPhone icons, can get a little stale. But unlike the iPhone, Windows 8 users can in fact create custom tiles in their own without any software hacking.

All you need to do is download OblyTile and have some sort of imaging program to create the tiles. The larger tiles are 120 x 120 pixels and the smaller list icons are 30 x 30. You will need to create your new images using these dimensions.

OblyTile application interface for creating custom tiles.

Image Credit xda-developers.com

Here is a video from pocketnow, showing OblyTile in action.

Image by HotHardware

The next big software update for iPhone is coming sometime in April and will include a Food section in Apple News+, an easy-to-miss new Ambient Music app, Priority Notifications thanks to Apple Intelligence, and updates to apps like Mail, Photos, Podcasts, and Safari. See what else is coming to your iPhone with the iOS 18.4 update.