How to configure the new Home Screen in Windows 10?

Microsoft Windows 10, currently under Technical Preview, came with a new Home Screen when you launch the File Explorer. It pins all your favourite icons, frequent folders, recent files and more to help you easily launch the frequent files/folders from a single place.

Today in this post, we will discuss how to configure the Home screen, add or remove icons, organize the tiles properly.

Above is a screenshot of Windows 10 Home Screen, where you can place your favourite icons, frequently used folders, recent files and other files/folders as a quick entry tile icons. It’s a new screen added to the Windows Technical Preview (code named: Windows Threshold). When you launch the File Explorer, this is the screen you will encounter first.

How to add a new folder to the Favourites category?

If you want to add your most frequent folders under the favourites category, navigate to that folder and click the “Add to favorites” tab icon in the Home ribbon bar, as shown in the below screenshot:

Once you add the folder as favorite, it will highlight the tab icon to let you know that the folder is already in your favorite list:

Once done, come back to the home screen and refresh the view. You will see that the newly added folder is now part of the favorites group under your Home Screen. You can add as many icons into the list. Here is a screenshot:

If you want t remove any favorite icon from the Home screen, just navigate to that folder and deselect the “Add to favorites” tab icon in the ribbon bar.

How to reset the Home Screen view to show in proper category?

Did you screwed up your home screen while playing with it? Never mind! You can reset the view properly to group the icons in proper way like favorites, frequent folders etc. Make sure you have icons in the home screen before proceeding next. This will give you the preview while doing so.

Right click on any empty space in the Home screen. Navigate to the “Group by” context menu item and select “Group”. You will now see that, all those icons organized properly in a grouped manner. Frequent folders and recent files are not showing in the Home Screen? Don’t worry! The next point will help you to reset that.

How to show/hide the Frequent folders and Recent files in the Home screen?

If you unknowingly removed the Frequent folders and Recent files group in Windows 10 Home Screen and unable to bring it back, here are the simple steps to follow:

• Right click on the taskbar and click Properties. Alternatively, you can search for “Taskbar and Navigation” in the start menu or start screen to launch the Taskbar and Start Menu properties.
• Now navigate to the “Start Menu” tab as shown in the below screenshot.
• Select both the checkboxes that says “Store and display recently opened programs in the Start menu” and “Store and display recently opened items in the Start menu and the taskbar”.
• Tune the number of recent items (by default it is 10).

Once done, click OK to save the settings. Now open few files/folders and then navigate back to the Home screen. You will be able to see those two categories with the files/folders you recently opened. Hit refresh, if you are facing any issues.

That’s all! If you want to turn them off due to privacy concerns, just follow the above steps and uncheck both the checkboxes mentioned above. Windows will not track any recently opened files/folders.

I hope, the post gave you brief overview of the Windows 10 Home Screen and it’s related Tricks. Don’t forget to check out my other posts on Windows 10 Tips & Tricks.