Microsoft Shows Off New Live Tile And Notification Features

At Microsoft’s Build conference this year, the company started to talk about the changes coming to its live tiles. Along with all the other updates announced during the first day keynote, these features will be released with the Anniversary update.

The company demoed new ‘chaseable’ Live tiles. What this means is that when a live tile is showing content, if you click the tile during that instance, it will open to what was shown on the tile. This should make it a lot easier to get the content you are looking for when viewing the tile in your Start menu.

There are also updates to the Toast notifications too. The company is making changes to the ‘adaptive’ toasts that provide a much richer experience. Also, the rich notifications also show up in the action center too and you can see the updates in the gallery below.

Developers will be able to use larger images, a new button style and Microsoft has improved the discoverability; the action center icon in the system tray will now show the number of unread items currently in the Action In the upcoming Anniversary update, Edge will support desktop notification center integration which means web clients (such as Skype), can push notifications to the desktop too.

There are a few features not shown, that many are hoping the company will still include such as interactive tiles and folders; no word on if or when those features are coming.

These updates, while they may seem small, will make the user interactions a little bit better that creates a better overall experience. Seeing as these features were not talked about on stage at the day one keynote but are coming with the update, shows that the company has more features for the Anniversary update up its sleeve.