win8 AutoPin Controller - do not pin everything to Start Screen

[Sergey "hb860"]

AutoPin Controller - the child of my sleepless night :cry: .

This application beats the most annoying feature of Windows 8 - auto pinning the installed software to Start Screen. With this little tool you can temporary disable pinning feature, then you can install everything you want and it will not be pinned. After that you can unlock pinning feature again.

Also AutoPin Controller will allow you to reset the Start Screen with one click: it will remove all tiles/shortcuts and set them to first logon state.

A tricky tip: lock the pinning, install software you need, unlock the pinning and pin that YOU NEED, not everything.

Download link

I started to hate Windows 8 for auto pinning after I got VS 2012 installed. I got full Start Screen of crap :angry:

[djdanster]

Thanks :)

[MS Bob 11]

This will help to not make everything cluttered when you install something and pin only the stuff people want. :punk:

[daanodinot]

Thanks for you application! I was looking for this functionality.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work for all types of shortcuts, like library shortcuts. I use library shorcuts (shortcut to e.g. the "Documents" library) in the start menu folder to enable keyboard shortcuts. I don't want actually see them (in the desktop, taskbar or start screen). The problem is that Windows handles library shortcuts differently than application shortcuts. With application shortcuts, Windows remembers whether you've pinned or unpinned them. Library shortcuts are always pinned whenever you reboot (or perhaps re-login) you PC.

Note: I say 'library shortcuts' to be precise but it may also apply to other types of shortcuts.

Would it be possible to disable this?

[Sergey "hb860"]

Let me see

[Sergey "hb860"]

KeyMs92,

I can't repeat your issue. I put "C:\Users\Sergey\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Documents - Shortcut.lnk" which point to Documents library and it does not appear pinned.

But, try to set "hidden" attribute on that shortcut file. Maybe it will help you.

[daanodinot]

Thanks for your reply! Sorry to say, but seems I can't reproduce the issue either... It's working perfectly now!

It's weird.. it's almost like it didn't initialize properly in the beginning (despite several reboots during that period). It's only now that I see that the 'add to start screen' option in the jumplist is actually gone - before it wasn't. BTW, yes the application was actually on 'locked' during that time. :)

One other thing is that I've had several 'waves' of the same error: 'not authorized to makes this change', or something like that. It happens when opening the application as well as when clicking a button. Maybe these two issues are related, I'm not sure... I'll let you know if I experience problems again.

[Aergan]

Many thanks, I have to install Visual Studio 2012 next after rebuilding earlier.