No, I’m not talking about Frankenstein and the monster! I’m actually talking about live tiles on the Windows 10 Start Menu. With apologies to my Mac and Linux readers, this post is strictly related to Windows 10.

“What are live tiles?” I hear you ask. Great question! Live tiles are start menu tiles which change based on what they represent. Let’s take a look at a short video (yes, the video runs on its own and loops) view of my own start menu:

As you can see in the video, there are a number of tiles which change as long as the start menu is showing. For me, all of the tiles under the heading “Time” change because…wait for it…the time changes. There’s also a live video of my pictures and those pictures flip from one to the next all the time. There’s the OneNote tile which changes, too. One of the tiles on my start menu which is also live but didn’t happen to switch while I was filming this is the Weather tile. That tile is live as well and will show me various weather conditions if I keep the start menu up long enough.

What’s the advantage of live tiles? Mostly, they’re time savers although some, like the photo live tile, are just for entertainment. Other live tiles I use but aren’t shown moving in this video are appointments and money. The money tile will show the current stock market value and I can watch individual stocks and see how they fluctuate during the day. Instead of having to go to a web page to get this information, I can simply pop-up the start menu and see what’s happening. (A perfect example of the time saving advantage.)

Now, it’s your turn. Take a look at your Windows 10 start menu and see what tiles are live!

Just for the record, earlier this year, because of a start menu change to Windows 10X, rumors were abounding that live tiles are going away. For the moment, Microsoft says they are not. But, one thing you should know about the computing world, changes – expected and unexpected – can happen in the wink of an eye.