While it’s a bit tricky to sort favorites in the Windows 7 start menu, it turns out to be quite obvious how to sort the programs and applications listed on the Windows 8.1 (Win8) Apps Screen, if you can find that screen in the first place!
If you’re used to working with your PC from the Desktop screen — and, honestly, who isn’t? — then there’s a bit of a journey you have to travel to get from there to the Apps Screen first, and I expect that’s one reason that so many Win8.1 users haven’t really explored this darn helpful feature area in the OS.
If you’re looking at your Desktop on your Win8 laptop or tablet, press the Windows key on your keyboard or the Home button on your tablet. You’ll end up looking at something like this:
See the tiny downward pointing arrow on the lower left? If you don’t see it, just touch somewhere on the background or move your cursor around a bit and it’ll show up.
Turns out that subtle little arrow is well worth clicking / tapping on. Do so, and you’re at the Apps Screen:
By default, this is a listing of every program and application you have installed on your Windows system, sorted by the name of the app. Well, actually that’s not true, this is a list of everything on the system and every other program or app you’ve purchased or downloaded at some point from the App Store. You can tell the latter, as they have a faint “Install” adjacent, as you can see in this closeup:
Alarms is installed, but neither Adera nor Agent P Strikes Back are on this particular Win8.1 system.
More interestingly, though, is the phrase By Name adjacent to the screen’s title on the top left, “Apps”. Again, a closeup:
That’s how you can reorganize the apps shown on this screen as desired. Easy enough, actually!
I like to occasionally go to the “by most used” sort…
Notice how different it is to sort by most used rather than alphabetically!
And here’s a handy tip: if you scroll / swipe all the way to the right, you can see which apps or programs are installed on your Windows 8 system but that are your least used apps:
This is a list well worth examining closely and are the first on the list of programs or applications that you might want to delete to save space and resources.
Now go try this yourself!
