I’m still on Windows 10 and will probably run it until the computer dies completely. I love the Start Menu! But I want to add weather to the Menu that shows the current weather, not just the app icon. Can you help me out?
You’re by no means the only person who is a die-hard Windows 10 user! Worth pointing out, however, is that it reaches the official End Of Life (EOL) in October of 2025, after which time it’s going to be increasingly risky to run. Why? Because once Microsoft stops supporting it, bugs and exploits will be found, publicized, and not fixed, meaning it’ll become an increasingly porous and therefore increasingly insecure operating system. You’ve got lots of time, but it’s worth thinking about before you’re hacked or get some ransomware dropped on your computer!
Since I also have a few Windows 10 laptops – that can’t be updated to Windows 11, alas – I can indeed answer your question because while it took a while to get used to the Start Menu, it is a pretty slick idea, and doubly so once you add a few “live tiles”. Let’s have a look…
WINDOWS 10 START MENU: ADD AN APP
At its most basic, the Win10 Start Menu is a space upon which you can drop tiles of various sizes as shortcuts to your favorite apps:
You can see here that my Calendar app is a big 4×4 tile, while Groove Music and Photos are smaller 1×1 tiles. The lower section includes Settings, Camera, Word, This PC, and Computer Management, along with a hole! Let’s fill that hole with a shortcut tile to Calculator (highlighted in the app list).
One way to do that is to simply drag-and-drop the Calculator entry to the spot you want, but instead, just right-click on an entry to bring up the context menu:
No surprise, “Pin to Start” adds it to an appropriate slot on the grid:
In this instance, it’s created a whole new section even though there’s that hole! To solve that, click and drag the tile to the spot you want, which actually shortens the entire Start Menu. You can also resize a tile by right-clicking on it and choosing “Resize”:
Let’s make it Wide…
Now, what about the Weather app?
ADDING LIVE TILES TO THE START MENU
Add the Weather app in the same manner you just added Calculator, make it “Large” position it to your aesthetic preference (I removed Groove Music and Photos), then right-click to choose the “More” sub-menu:
Here’s what we want! “Turn Live Tile on”. This is obviously only an option for a small subset of applications that have the necessary code to manage the display of its tile, so Calculator won’t have this choice. Enabled? Great. Done.
Or are you?
When I enabled the Live Tile weather on my Win10 PC, it showed the weather for the wrong location! This can be solved by choosing “App settings” from that same “More” menu (you can see it above), which reveals:
There’s the problem! The weather app works best with Location enabled. Change that from Off to On, then have a few minutes of patience for the app itself to catch up and, finally…
Mission accomplished.
Pro tip: I’ve been writing about Microsoft Windows for many years. Please check out my extensive and well-documented Windows help area for over 1,000 useful tutorials!