Question

We are using TileWideImage and TileSquareImage and appropriate XML (as described here) to setup our custom tiles in our Windows 8 game as you finish different levels in the game.

The way our tiles are designed, we don’t want any text or icons to show up at all (other than the single image we have created for each version of the tile).

For some reason, TileWideImage puts our app’s small icon (I think 30×30 pixels) in the bottom left. We also notice our default icon has text on it when you install the app. Neither of these are desired.

Is there a way to get the behavior we want?

Answer 1

You can turn off the text on the default tile via the application manifest:

but if you send a tile update that setting can be overridden by in the XML Schema via the branding attribute of the visual or binding tag.

In this case you’ll want to send your tile updates similar to:

<tile>
    <visual branding="none">
        <binding template="TileWideText03">
            <text id="1">Hello World! My very own tile notification</text>
        </binding>
        <binding template="TileSquareText04">
            <text id="1">Hello World! My very own tile notification</text>
        </binding>
    </visual>
</tile>

By the way, the App Tiles and Badges Sample is a great resource to do quick tests on tiles like this, confirm behavior, etc.