Microsoft Band 2 Tip: Customize Your Band

Once you get your new Microsoft Band 2 home and sync it up with your smart phone for the first time, the next step is to customize it. You do so with the Microsoft Health app on your phone.

To access Band 2’s customization capabilities, tap the Menu button in the upper right corner of the Microsoft Health app. In the lengthy menu that appears, you will see a few options related to Band 2 customization: My Microsoft Band, Personalize Band, and Manage Tiles.

My Microsoft Band

Here, you can rename your Band 2 or unregister the device from your Microsoft account if you are selling it or giving it away.

Personalize Band

This simple interface lets you change the color and background wallpaper that display on Band 2, and there’s a handy preview so you can see what the changes look like before you sync them to the device.

With the color choose, you can specify one of 18 possible color choices, with 11 being full-screen color options and 7 being accent colors over a black background.

The wallpaper chooser is likewise limited, with 10 choices, one of which will be blank if you previously chose a full-screen color option.

Manage Tiles

The Manage Tiles interface is the most important of the customization options, and it lets you choose which tiles (e.g. “apps”) appear on your Band 2, and in what order. (Remember that Band 2 features what is essentially a panoramic UI consisting of a single row of tiles.)

On the main Mange Tiles screen, you can scroll through the list of tiles and enable and disable them as you see fit. Some tiles, like Messaging, Calls, Calendar, Run, Bike, and several others also provide additional options as denoted by the pencil-like “edit” icon next to their names. Just tap this icon to access those additional options.

(While Band 2 works nearly identically with Android, iPhone and Windows phone handsets, there are some minor differences, so what you see in Manage Tiles may differ slightly depending on which phone type you use.)

After you’ve determined which tiles will appear on your Band 2, tap the “Rearrange the tiles on your Band’s start strip” link to arrange the tiles as you prefer. For example, you might want to place the tiles you access the most towards the left (or front) of the strip so that they’re easily accessible.

You may find yourself experimenting over time, both with color schemes and tiles. And of course if you use some features, like guided workouts, you have additional configuration options that you may access more frequently as well.