As you may have seen by now, Microsoft is reinventing Windows from an icon based OS to a live tile based OS, hundreds of new features and changes are being added, and even though there are a lot of things that are new, they are not too complicated to relearn and customization still somehow simple. Now what happens when you want to add your own tweaks, for example, in this case shortcuts to perform and specific task such as launching an application, or something that would be useful, like including the missing Shutdown or Restart capabilities back — of course, you can use + I keyboard shortcut in Windows 8 too, but many people are used to shutting down from the classic Start menu.
How to create a shortcut in Windows 8
Open Windows Explorer and in the address bar type the following and press Enter:
Once you are in Programs, you’ll need to create a shortcut for anything you like — For this Windows How-To we are going to be creating a Shutdown shortcut: On an empty space, do a right-click, navigate through New and click on Shortcut. In there type the following and click Next to continue:
Shutdown computer
Restart computer
Hibernate computer
Sleep computer
In the next step, type a descriptive name for the shortcut, e.g., Shutdown computer or Shutdown Windows 8, etc., this can be anything you like, and then click Finish to create the shortcut.
- When you are done creating the shortcut, you’ll see that a new icon showed up in the folder. You can double-click it to test if indeed it shuts the computer down, or in the other cases if it restarts, sleeps or hibernates your computer.
Changing shortcut icon
You probably don’t like the default icon for the shortcut, it would be nice if it had a more meaningful image, right?
OK then, right-click the shortcut (Shutdown Computer) and click on Properties. In the Shortcut tab, click on Change Icon, click OK if a message box appears, select the icon you like, click OK, Apply and OK again.
Now the Shutdown shortcut has a better look.
Adding Shutdown button to the Start screen in Windows 8
Once you’re done creating the Shutdown shortcut, go back to the new Start screen and type shutdown computer or the name you called the shortcut.
On the result that appears in your left-hand side, right-click the item to select.
And at the bottom right-hand corner, click Pin.
Finally, go back to the Start screen and you’ll see your newly created shortcut, all the way in the right side. Now the only thing left for you to do is to move it any where you like and test it one more time.
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