Personalize Your Windows Phone
Windows Phone 8 is not a complicated mobile operating system. Because it has a different user interface than Android and iOS - Live Tiles, it might seem as if it is difficult. It's not. Windows Phone 8 is all about making your phone more personal, and here, you'll understand how.
Steps
- Add and sync your different accounts on your phone, from settings > email + accounts > add an account.
- For every contact, you'll have to link their different accounts into one card. This is partially done automatically when setting up your accounts; however, some contacts might be left out. Instead of having multiple cards for the same contact in the People Hub, each of which has a single piece of information about them (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Outlook, etc.), and to get the most of the Live Tiles, you'll want to link them together (This contact has 6 accounts linked into one card).
- Go to each contact, and click on the chain button shown in the picture above. The phone will suggest similar accounts to link with, or you can search for a specific one.
- This will help in the next step, where the real personal customization starts!
- Pin to start your favorite web links, music or photos albums, artists, Facebook pages or Twitter searches, etc., by either pressing on the pin button where available or holding on an artist or album until the 'pin to start' option shows up.
- You can, after linking similar contacts' accounts together, pin them to start so that the latest tweets, Facebook statuses, any missed calls or new messages will appear on the tile.
- ... Or you can add people to groups in the People Hub, and pin the whole group to start so that the tile will show the news from all of them.
- You should only pin the most relevant stuff to yourself on the start screen so that your phone will be personal and like no other windows phone!
- Rearrange and resize the tiles as preferred. The larger the tile, the more information it will show.
- Set your favorite color as the theme color, from settings > theme > accent color.
- Search the Store for customization apps. Some of these include:
- Lock screen text: This allows you to display a sentence on your lock screen. It needs to be configured from the lock screen settings (in the next step).
- Skinery tiles pro: This app makes it possible to put a wallpaper as a background to a set of apps' tiles (incompatible with all apps).
- Tiles' organizer: You can add custom tiles to the homescreen and possibly use it to organize the homescreen under a few titles.
- Wiztiles: This app allows you to put a wallpaper as a set of tiles on the homescreen.
- Set the desired apps to show notifications on your lock screen. From the lock screen settings, you can choose the most important 5 apps to display a count for their notifications, and one 'detailed' app (where you can set it to be the lock screen text from the previous step).
- Choose a background for your lock screen. It can be a photo of your choice, a Bing photo that changes daily, or you can let Facebook display a chosen album images, etc.
Tips
- This article aims to help you get the most of your windows phone by personalizing it. For the rest of the operations and guidelines, you might want to search the internet.
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- Increase the Battery Life of a Windows Phone 8 Device
- Close Apps in Windows 8
- Get a Windows 8 Look for an Android Device
- Use a Windows Phone
