• Michael
• On November 17, 2016

Use the mobile website instead of the web-wrapper app

Microsoft Edge for Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile ships with a built-in option to pin websites to the Start so you can open them directly from the home screen. Pinning a website to the start screen will allow you to jump to the address instantly without opening the browser, typing the address in the bar, or selecting the site from favorites.

There are many benefits of pining a Tile for a website. First of all, you can create shortcuts to websites you care and visit often, and have them on the home screen for a quick access. But the most important thing here is that you can basically eliminate some apps completely. There are many applications in the Store that are web-wrappers – apps extracting data from HTML documents. These apps look almost identical to their respective mobile websites, so there is no point of using them if you have a browser. Sites like Ebay, Amazon.com, Yummly and many others can be pinned to Start, creating a shortcut and simulating app-like experience. Many of these apps are slow and buggy, so using the browser is probably a better solution.

You can even get rid of the Facebook app and replace it with a Tile shortcut to facebook.com. It works great and if you don’t mind to lose the app notifications you can access many services through the Microsoft Edge browser and their mobile sites.

To pin a website to Start in Windows 10 / Windows 10 Mobile:

1. Open Microsoft Edge

2. Go to the website

3. Press (…) and tap ‘Pin this page to Start’