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I've searched the samples, the developer site, the getting started and the enhancing bla bla bla pages.

Even using some search queries on Google, I can't seem any information on live tiles in Windows 8.

How do I create a live tile in Windows 8? What languages can be used for that? C#? XAML?

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7 Answers 7

up vote 29 down vote accepted


You can use either C# or VB + XAML or HTML/JS or C++.

That was the big announcement at the BUILD conference and the whole point of WinRT (God I hope they actually are serious about pushing WinRT for more than a year).

Otherwise it would be back to the Silverlight/.Net uprising that we saw after the first preview. . .


You'll first need to learn the terminology of the MetroUI. You can also find more info under Windows Phone 7.

The Live Tiles can send tile notifications. That's how the socialite tile does the facebook feed. The OS will cycle through tile notifications that you've declared. This is all in the basic Tile sample and the advanced Tile sample.

Here is a link to all the samples from the BUILD event.

Start here for a step by step walkthrough of the platform. I would start there if the reference documentation is confusing.

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Now, how do I get the tile to update? The documentation is confusing, there doesn't seem to be an example or tutorial that explicitly shows how to update a tile... :( –  Tom Wijsman Sep 16 '11 at 10:44
You are looking for tile notifications. –  surfasb Sep 16 '11 at 11:13
+1 I thought a notification was supposed to interrupt the user to notify him somethnig, how's that called? –  Tom Wijsman Sep 16 '11 at 13:30
@Tom wijsman: To grab the user's attention, you should use a Toast notification. Toasts are those small windows that slide out on the lower right. –  surfasb Sep 17 '11 at 13:21

Finally figured it out, these live tiles are using tile notifications as noted by others.

Here is the minimal code necessary for updating an existing default tile with a template:

  1. You have to load in a template and adjust it, or produce your own XML code. See the tile schema...

    var tileXml = Notifications.TileUpdateManager.getTemplateContent(template); 
  2. You need to create a notification, which apparently is an update to a tile.

    var notification = new Notifications.TileNotification(tileXml); 
  3. You need to create an updater, which will provide you with methods to notify through your tile.

    var upd = Notifications.TileUpdateManager.createTileUpdaterForApplication();
  4. If you have all this, you can send an update to the client.

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The documents for notifications have been updated since the Consumer Preview release - a good starting point is the 'choosing a notification delivery method' document.

It has all of the relevant pointers to push, polling, scheduled and local notifications.

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The available Metro documentation is here:


It's pretty patchy at the moment but there are samples, such as:


Not all the samples are available in multiple languages, and that tile example is JS only, but based on what I've read elsewhere, it seems everything can be done with .NET languages, native (C++) or JS using the same APIs.

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I've found Creating and using tiles, toast, and Windows push notifications, it however doesn't display how to update tiles and I can't seem to find a sample that updates a tile with live information (and perhaps an animation) and don't know where I would need to look in the code. The TileUpdateManager lists no sample code for this, so I'm clueless... :( –  Tom Wijsman Sep 16 '11 at 10:40

App tiles and badges sample is what you are looking for.

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NotificationExtension library (part of MSDN sample in toast notification, application tile notification ) is very easy to use.

For tile/toast notification updates following approaches can be used

  1. Directly from the application
  2. From the background tasks
  3. From the WNS (push notification service)

Thorough samples are available in msdn code samples

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Here is an article with code that discusses how to implement live tiles in a real-world app. It walks through the 4 mechanisms for delivering tile notifications, the design decisions that were made, all of the code that was implemented, and some further resources on live tiles.

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