yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] unvaluablespace:
Thank you so much for this program! It's a great way to add you own tiles into Windows 8. My brother and I both use it. :)

We were both wondering, would there be a way to make "metro folders"? such as instead of having a folder open on the desktop in windows, open within metro itself? the idea behind this would be to even further categorize metro, and instead of having "games" or whatever particular topic cluttered across the metro environment, clicking on said "folder" would open a new set of tiles within metro with whatever you choose.

The metro environment is really cool and nice, but once you have more programs, clutters up real quickly, and while simply dividing them apart from one another is nice, it still gets unorganized fast, and spans across the desktop very quickly, so having the option to have multiple tiles hidden in one tile "folder" would be cool. :)

We are not asking you to make this feature specifically (although if you did, we would not complain, lol) but rather if you think it would be possible? :) thanks again.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
Yes, in my opinion it is possible to make some "sub-menu" or "metro folder" for the start screen.

At the moment, i can't really work on it, many things to do for the next months, but, would be glad to make it.

Thank you for your suggestion! :highfive:

Argony
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] unvaluablespace:
Ha! You rock! Thank you! ^_^ that's all we needed to know. Not in a hurry for it, though the sooner the better. It would be cool to categorize metro tiles that way. Thanks again.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Ndaoud360:
Hey what will happen when windows blue update releases because that has smaller tiles and bigger tiles. Would that be hard to make like long tiles?
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Bummerten:
Yeah. It would be nice to hear, if you have been playing around with the leaked version.

Its such a shame we cant make Wide tiles, since so many of my tile ideas is with these.

I appreciate your effort, Argony!
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
Hey there,

I have not had time yet to try the leaked version of "windows blue", it's still early to say how "windows blue" will impact on the tiles customization.

I hope they will add the possibility to customize tiles for legacy applications, so far, the new type of tiles should not make it harder to find a way to create wide tiles for legacy applications.

Have a good day!

Argony
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] rb32:
looking for last tiles, .png

Hello, I love Oblytile. It makes my Startscreen to appear clean.

The only issue are missing ping for Pogoplug and FreeFilesync.

Unfortunately I'm not good in creating graphics. I hope somebody created

These png's already and is willing to share them.

Thanx in advanced
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] rosystreasures:
I wish I could give this a try....waiting on my Asus Win 8 RT tablet.....will it work on RT?
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] GoodDayToDie:
It runs on RT (you could have searched the thread and found that easily) but isn't really supported there; I don't believe the dev has an RT device to test with yet. It's not like there are many desktop apps for pinning in RT yet anyhow...
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Insert_here:
Great little app but I've managed to make tiles for most of my often used programs except a certain few. I just can't get them to work. iTunes and Peerblock. When I hit the iTunes tile the program appears to start (outline of window appearing) but I get an error on top of that and have to close it:

"iTunes has stoppped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program...

Peerblock gives an error upon launch:

"Peerblock is unable to load the packet filtering driver etc etc...

class win32_error

OpenService

1060

The specified service does not exist as an installed service."

I'll keep trying what I can. Anyone on here have any experience with these apps? Successfully launch? I know I have the correct program paths and I've tried several "Tile Settings" in OblyTile. Should I be trying program arguments? I don't even know any :(

Once again thanks for the program :good:
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] GoodDayToDie:
For "should I be trying program arguments" you need to look at the Shortcut files that are normally used to launch those programs.

The one thing I note about both programs is that they both use a high-privilege Windows service. It may be that for some reason OblyTile launches them in a way that makes it impossible to connect to this service, though that would be weird.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Ndaoud360:
I downloaded windows 8.1 and obly tile works and it allows you to make the icon smaller when right clicking but not bigger.

Also is there a way to import previous tiles without a back up. I have all the folders of tiles but when I put them back in the obly folder. Nothing shows.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
Thanks for the informations about OblyTile on Windows 8.1 :good:

Truly hope that microsoft will give us the chance to customize our tiles without the usage of external programs.

If you want to import manually a previous "backup", you need these 2 folders:

Folder with all the resources located at:

"C:\Program Files\OblyTile"

Folder with the "lnk" (Shortcuts) located at:

"%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Application Shortcuts\OblyTile"

Hope this helps

Argony
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Ndaoud360:
Thanks it helped but apparently I deleted the app shortcuts folder so I guess I have to redo it.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] fredphoesh:
Hello guys,

My tiles need cache rebuilt almost every day...

It would be GREAT to have a little applet which can either be made to run each time the computer starts, AND a little click will rebuild cache without having to start Oblytile... so it there would be a "Refresh Cache" tile as well as an Oblytile tile.

Even better, someone figures how to get Win8 to "like" the custom tiles permanently!

Cheers and thanks again for the great work.

Mark.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] jjsoviet:
This is a great app! Really makes things very clean, especially with the wide selection of custom tiles on sources such as DeviantArt.

I have a couple questions though:

1. Is it possible to create a custom shortcut to the Windows Store? I'm trying to do this but I can't seem to find a link to the app or its installation location. Would be nice to have every tile to have no program title because in my case I'm trying to achieve a minimal look.

2. Some Metro apps (like Nextgen Reader, etc.) don't seem to load properly when launched from OblyTile. At times only the splash screen shows up and nothing happens afterwards. Any reason as to why certain programs from the Windows Store fail to launch in this configuration?

Many thanks. :D
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Lucker:
Thanks a lot! It helps if run OblyTile in regular account (not as admin as I should do with previous version)
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
Hope to find a definitive fix for this issue. Though, i think that "windows 8.1" will give us the possibility to customize our tiles for legacy applications.

Yes, it is possible to create custom tiles for Windows Store Apps.

Here's how to do it:

I do not know why some windows store apps do not launch properly, the code i used to make the launcher can be found on the (msdn) microsoft forum.

Hope this helps

Argony
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] fredphoesh:
Cool both ways ;)

Cheers

Mark
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] jjsoviet:
I'm actually looking for the shortcut to the Windows Store by itself, not the apps you get from it.

And as for the select few that don't launch, I think it's an issue of authentication or something. Most RSS readers I've tried that use Google Reader don't launch using OblyTile, but they do work when opened using their original tiles first. Anyways, thanks for the reply! :D
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Rstr:
Awesome and super-useful app! :good:

Just 1 question: is there a possibility to create a wide (rectangle) tile, not just a square? :confused:
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] GoodDayToDie:
Rstr, please search before posting (literally first rule of the forum!); we all would love wide tiles, and they've been asked for *many* times, and Argony is working on it - but no promises.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Rstr:
GoodDayToDie - I'm sorry, I saw those posts, but I wanted to make sure that they haven't been added yet.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] dubsdj:
any progress on default user tiles?

Hi is there any progress on making the tiles work so any new user that logs into the computer can see the custom tiles?

as it stands this isn't the case.. The all users tiles will only show on any user who had logged in before the tiles were made.

or is there a way of making a script that imports the tiles on user login / computer startup? maybe?

thanks for the create application!
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
Hello, so far, no progress about this.

Also, at moment i can't work on OblyTile, busy days.

I'll be working on it as soon as possible :good:

Argony
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] DigitaL BlisS:
Hey Argony,

What do we do if we've ripped IE from our Windows 8 install? Guess I'm SOL eh?

edit: Urgh, ended up reinstalling W8 because I was encountering issues with some shortcuts as well. All is well now.

Anyway, thanks for the extremely useful app!
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
Hey there :highfive:

Good question.

In this case, you must try this:

Reddit - OblyTile Fix

Hope this helps

Argony
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] alemezu:
awesome app!

hey this app is exactly what i needed!!
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] natihorny:
Great program!

When will it be possible to make double tiles?
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] heksesang:
Someone might have pointed out this already, but it seems that when single instance is enabled for an app, you seem to use the maximize toggle regardless if the application is minimized or not. Means it works fine when it's minimized, but it resizes when it's not.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] trashbytes:
Yes! Same problem here. This is really annoying.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] dubsdj:
EDIT: I have swapped this script over to run at log in just because I was curious... It seems as long as you have asynchronous group policy enabled for login scripts then it won't hold up the log in time at all! What's even better is that you can see the tiles appearing before your eyes! Nice touch..

I also noticed if you have this batch file running at login you need to put TIMEOUT /T 6 before everything else executes. I think it is because the login is doing some processing which causes a slight interruption to begin with.

This may or may not work it's all about timings during the login... you may find UAC errors when trying to run the script during login. It may execute too early and permissions are not available for the user depending on the environment you are working in.

I would suggest sticking with running this script on logoff for less problems.

so it would look like this:

if exist c:\Tiles\Tilepack1\%username% (goto end)

md c:\Tiles\Tilepack1\%username%

TIMEOUT /T 6

start \\mydomain.local\NETLOGON\Windows_8_Scripts\Ob.exe " " "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (64 Bit)\photoshop.exe" "" "\\mydomain.local\NETLOGON\Windows_8_Scripts\Obly_Images\cs5.png" "\\mydomain.local\NETLOGON\Windows_8_Scripts\Obly_Images\cs5.png" #2D8AEF #FFFFFF show normal no no no

TIMEOUT /T 4

start \\mydomain.local\NETLOGON\Windows_8_Scripts\Ob.exe " " "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] monty13:
Hi Argony-OT!

Loving Oblytile

Please could you consider adding the option to make the background colour transparent?
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
I really don't know. :(

This will (hopefully) be fixed with the new version. (no eta)

I'm not sure i can do it.

We must see what Windows 8.1 (the update) will bring to us in terms of Tile Customization.

Argony
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] dravenSt0rM:
Awesome application. If it wasn't for OblyTile I wouldn't made my icon pack. If any of you guys want to try it you can find it on deviantart.

METRO TILES
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
Thanks for sharing ! :good:
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Bungee4CE:
Really need support for Windows 8 tablets, and although you stated that Obly Tile has been tested on Windows RT (using a Surfaced 32Gb) I am unable to run the app on a Dell XPS 10 with 64gb as the OS advises that the latest app exe is not compatible. ?
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
To run OblyTile on Windows RT, you need to jailbreak your device.

More infos here: RT Jailbreak Tool

Argony
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] chaeril:
on 0.9.1 when i make a tile oblytile automatically add a start menu shortcut (using classic start menu) and when i remove it the tile disappear as well, is there anyway it not creating a start menu or maybe a place where i could get older version.

edit: fixed by using oblytile for current user

thanks
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] RADroid:
How to launch Immerisve Browser for Web URLs?

Awesome App - my Start Screen never looked so good. Can you clarify what you mean by this?

"•In order to launch the Immersive mode of your web browser by using a tile made with OblyTile, be sure to close the desktop version of it."

I would like to have Web URL tiles launch in the Metro Immersive browser. Can OblyTile do that?

Edit: NVM it works if you go to the desktop browser-Tool-Internet Options-Programs and set "how to open links" to "Always in Internet Explorer"
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] john2k5:
[SOLVED]All User apps pinned?

Hi,

Great app, absolutely love it!

We're trying to roll this out in a domain environment. (High school) but we've got a small issue.

If I create a tile for all users then create a new local user account. The tile shows in the "All Apps" section, but won't allow me to pin it to the start screen.

It thinks it's already pinned and won't unpin. Any ideas?

Thanks,

John

Edit: It works if I create the tiles for all users after the local user account is created on the computer. (Still won't unpin but that's not an issue for us).

This doesn't work in a domain environment though. I've looked at the command line scripts for logoff, but, if I'm correct, they don't store a tile layout so would just group them all together in one big block?

Edit 2: Trying a different approach, I'm going to put obly in the default profile for the machine and see what happens after a sysprep. Hoping it will remember and create the tiles for all new users. Fingers crossed!

Ps. Congratulations on de-lurking me! Only took 4 years! ;)

Edit 3: Creating the obly tiles in audit mode then sysprepping the image worked perfectly! Any user that logs in gets the default profile with the obly tiles pinned nicely! Now to create some icons for all our programs we use in school!

Thank you for creating this fantastic program!
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] kissxmexkillxme:
SSD (two drive) issue.

So I've been having an issue with OblyTile where if I have it on my C: drive it saves the files to the D: drive, and says the launcher shortcut is missing. If I put it on the D: drive, I have the same issue, but vice versa.

Is there a way to get around this? I've been moving the files from one drive to the other in order to get it to function somewhat properly. I've tried uninstalling/restarting/reinstalling, to no avail. Help would be much appreciated.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
I have been informed about this issue.

It will be fixed with the next update.

Argony
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] mmm273:
How can i pin Computer to atart via this app..
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] monty13:
Open Obly, open tile manager (top right corner) >> Quick List
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Piemo:
I'm sorry to make a (probably thousand times done, but can't figure it out) silly question. Is it right that OblyTile CAN'T create big tile? not 120x120 but 240x120, right?
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] monty13:
As far as I know, it can only do the square (small) tiles at the moment
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] chw2006:
I upgraded to Windows 8.1 and I can't seem to get the Single Instance option to stick anymore.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] t-ryder:
Will there be an updated version for Win 8.1 ?

Any chance of giving users the option to have alpha blending PNG files as tile or tile background?

Or the option to give the tiles and other stuff like buttons rounded corners? Like e.g. with a ruler to set 0-20 px round corner radius?
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
I'll try Windows 8.1 Preview as soon as i can.

Thanks you for your report :good:

There will be an updated version for Windows 8.1.

Other features such as alpha blending Png are not planned :(

Argony
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] dark.angel:
Is the program mechanism hard technically? I am looking for a way to disable automatic background color for standard Windows Apps in Windows 8.1 (Preview) without any 3rd party apps? The start screen now looks like a mess, cause' every app has own background color and it's like a rainbow on a screen. In W8.0 they had a same background color. Thank you for your work!
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
OblyTile does not use any native way to create tiles, so, theorically can't help with your problem. :(

Maybe there is some Registry key/value to use a standard color for all the shortcuts on the start screen, so far, had no time to try Windows 8.1, so, don't really know what they changed about the shortcuts and tiles.

PS: Sorry for the late reply.

Argony
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] dark.angel:
Thanks a lot for your reply! I didn't find yet any possibility to change individual color or turn off that function via registry. I think we have to wait RTM release and after that, I hope, there will be possible to hope that someone will analyze that function and find a way to control it. I wish you good luck with your app and thanks for your work ;)
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] dragon_76:
You can always just keep open a Command Prompt window and launch everything there, that way you only see black and white. For Christ's sake, you people ***** about EVERYTHING. How did you ever function when the Start Menu showed every application at once?
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] InsaneNutter:
Thanks, this app is great!

Easy to use and does what you expect it to. Its made my Windows 8.1 start screen so much nicer :D
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] LLJKRevol:
Is there a way I can manually edit and create tiles like OblyTile does?

I'm making a lot of tiles for all my console emulation games. Each game will have its own tile. For example, under the NES category, I'll have a tiles for Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, Tecmo Super Bowl, and so on. Times that by about a hundred, though. I've got a lot of ROMs, and several collections for the different consoles and handhelds.

I've made one tile for each console, as an example. (I'd post a picture, but it's too big to embed, and I'm locked from linking outside sites since I'm a newbie.)

Each tile launches the game shown, in full screen, and then it goes back to the Start screen.

But having to make literally over 100 tiles is going to be tedious. Especially having to navigate to select the emulator, then finding the ROM file path, choosing the color, navigating again to find the image, on and on and on. Worst yet, I have to create a tile from scratch in OblyTile. I don't see a way to base a new tile on an existing one.

Is there a way I can continue doing this manually? An xml file, or a registry, where all these tiles are kept? I checked the Start menu folder, but those are the desktop apps. OblyTile creates these as Metro App tiles. Where do they go? If I can make these tiles manually, perhaps I can copy and paste the tiles I made already, and then quickly edit them.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] jhoff80:
Edit: Never mind, found it in a previous post.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] lakedubvt:
I apologize if this has already been answered, but have searched with no success. Where are the exe files located for Office 365? Or how can I created a custom tile for these programs?
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] SixSixSevenSeven:
Somewhere in program files or program files x86 on your C drive
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] lakedubvt:
Found it "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15\WINWORD.EXE"
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Callison10:
Ongoing battery percentage on W8 devices, PLEASE. The CMD command is:

WMIC PATH Win32_Battery Get EstimatedChargeRemaining​

Not sure how you can implement that though but it's an idea !

Great program, lovin' the start screen and can't go without OblyTile.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] ehartwell:
My mom's new PC came with Windows 8 and I decided to leave it in the hopes that she might be the intended user. Turns out that only applies if you only use Windows 8 apps - not, for example, Windows Live Mail. Duh. Anyway, without OblyTile she wouldn't have had a chance. Thanks!

I'd like to know if it's possible for OblyTile to fix the rest of the app launch disaster:

I understand you're already fixing the restore-instead-of-maximize issue if the desktop app's already opened. Thanks.

Is there any way OblyTile could display a full screen splash screen while the desktop app's starting? It's hard to explain why some programs show a blank screen while starting while others show the desktop.

Is there any way OblyTile could return to the start screen if the desktop app closes? Thank goodness you can at least pin Show Start to the taskbar so my mom's not permanently stuck, but it would be nice to do that automatically.

Is there any way OblyTile could override the window style to hide the border (title/minimize/restore/close)?

Depending on how OblyTile works, those questions may well range from minor to impossible. It should be possible to spawn an intermediate process that shows the splash screen, launches the real application with its window style tweaked, and waits to see if the application exits so it can return control back to the start screen.

If you're not planning to commercialize OblyTile, why not open source it? I'd love to tackle 2,3,4 myself.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Argony-OT:
If you want to add many tiles quickly, you may want to use the command line arguments of OblyTile.

Run OblyTile with "/?" as argument to check the whole list of available arguments.

OblyTile.exe /?

Here's an example in batch (.bat)

@echo off
cd /d %~dp0
title OblyTile Batch

Start /wait "" OblyTile.exe "Calculator" "C:\Windows\system32\calc.exe" "" "C:\Tiles\Calculator.png" "C:\Tiles\Calculator_Small.png" #2594E9 #FFFFFF show admin no no no
Start /wait "" OblyTile.exe "Paint" "C:\Windows\system32\mspaint.exe" "" "C:\Tiles\Paint.png" "C:\Tiles\Paint.png" #00A8EC #FFFFFF show admin no no no

Echo Done!
Pause

The .bat file must be placed on the same folder where OblyTile.exe is located, and, you must run it as Administrator.

I like the idea, but i don't know yet how to implement such function. :(

As you said, using a "launcher" that showes the splash screen and open the application might be a easy workaround.

Autoit is perfect for the purpose.

The function "Back to Start" should work for the purpose :good:

OblyTile itself can't do it. :(

Autoit & _WinAPI_SetWindowLong might come handy.

Hope this helps

Argony.
[Windows 8 Development and Hacking] Kir3:
Add ability to be able to add the app in the All Apps in start screen instead of just Start Screen only.