Creating a shortcut link to any Windows 8 store application

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Windows 8 contains new Store or Modern apps, and sometimes, it might be convenient to launch such an application directly from the classic desktop or your own application. Doing so requires some manual steps and isn't exactly trivial, but not difficult either if you know your way around Windows.

So, let's say you wanted to create a shortcut on your desktop for the Windows 8's new calculator application (not the old calc.exe). Here are the steps to do so:

  1. Open up the special shell folder "AppsFolder". To do so, open Windows’ Start screen, and type in "shell:appsfolder" and press Enter. (Or, press Win+R, and type in the same.)
  2. You will now see a folder displaying the applications currently available and installed. Switch to the Details view to see the items in a list instead of just their icons. Use the small icons in the lower right corner of the window.
  3. Now, press the Alt key once to show the classic menus. Go to the View menu, and select "Choose details…".
  4. In the Choose Details dialog box, select the unchecked option ”AppUserModeId” and click OK. You should now see somewhat cryptic programmatic names for your applications.
  5. Find the correct application you prefer, such as Calculator, and then take a note of the AppUserModeId. For instance on my machine, the id for Calculator is "Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App". Similarly, for Netflix, it might be "4DF9E0F8.Netflix_mcm4njqhnhss8!App". Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to directly copy this information to the clipboard, so you have to type it in manually, or use some kind of OCR solution.
  6. With the correct id written down, proceed to create a new shortcut. Right-click your desktop, and choose New -> Shortcut from the popup menu. In the Create Shortcut dialog box, enter the following into the location field: "explorer shell:AppsFolder\id". Here, replace "id" with the id you wrote down earlier. For example: "explorer shell:AppsFolder\Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App".
  7. Click Next, type in a name, and click OK. You are done! The icon is initially the one of Explorer.exe, but you can select another one from the shortcut’s properties.

Hope this helps!

Keywords: How to create shortcut to windows 8 store app; create link to modern apps in Windows 8