Start, find, and close apps

The Start screen is your home base.

On Start, you can organize and manage your apps, contacts, websites, photo albums, playlists, and folders. This includes pinning and unpinning tiles to Start and creating, rearranging, and resizing them. For more info, see Customize the Start screen.

Surface has two types of apps that you can start from the Start screen:

• Windows Store apps—such as Music, Mail, and Weather.
• Desktop apps—such as Notepad and the Office apps.

Here’s how to start an app:

• Touch or mouse: From the Start screen, tap or click a tile. If you have lots of tiles, drag your finger across the screen or slide two fingers horizontally across the trackpad to scroll.
• Keyboard: Go to the Start screen, type the name of an app and press Enter.

You can also start desktop apps from the desktop. To switch to the desktop, go to the Start screen and tap or click Desktop (or press Windows logo key + D). You can create a shortcut for a desktop app or pin desktop apps that you frequently use to the taskbar. For more info about this, see How to use the taskbar.

Tip  You can start multiple apps and switch between them—for info about this, see Switch between open apps.

To find an app installed on your Surface, do one of the following:

• Search for an app. From the Start screen, swipe in from the right and tap the Search charm, enter an app name in the search box. The search results update as you type. Tap or click the app from the search results to open it.
• View all apps. From the Start screen, swipe down from the top of the screen (or right-click), and then tap or click All apps (in the lower-right corner).

If you don’t have the app you want, you can try searching the Windows Store. To find out how to do this, see one of the following topics:

• Surface RT: Install and uninstall apps
• Surface Pro: Install apps and programs

Apps that you install from the Windows Store (like Mail and Music) don’t slow down Surface, so you don’t need to close them. When you switch to another app, Windows leaves the app running in the background and will close it eventually if you don’t use it.

However, if you want to close a Windows Store app, here’s how:

• Using touch, drag the app from the top of the screen to the bottom. To do this press and hold just above the screen image, and then slide your finger all the way down the screen (until the app is off the screen).
• Using a mouse: Click the top of the app and when the pointer changes to a hand, drag the app down off the screen. You can also move the pointer into the upper-left corner, move the pointer straight down to show the open apps, then right click on an app and click Close.

It’s still a good idea to close desktop apps, such as Office apps, when you're done using them or before you shut down Surface. You can close most desktop apps by tapping or clicking the X in the upper-right corner of the app.