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The title is the whole question: Is it possible to use tile templates with secondary tiles in a Windows Store App? Also can secondary tiles animate? It looks like the answer is no, even in Windows 8.1 but maybe I am just missing something. Here is a link to the Tile Template:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.ui.notifications.tiletemplatetype.aspx

Here is a link to the SecondaryTile class:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/apps/br242183

It's weird because this seemed like an obvious oversight in Window 8 and they revamped secondary tiles a little bit in Windows 8.1.

satur9nine
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1 Answers1

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Live tile content (tile updates) can be sent to secondary tiles in much the same way that live tile content is sent to primary tiles. The secondary tile identifier needs to be specified when creating the TileUpdater (or the push notification channel, if using Windows Push Notifications).

TileUpdateManager.CreateTileUpdaterForSecondaryTile(secondaryTileId)

MSDN has a quickstart on sending tile updates which applies to both primary and secondary tiles.

This behavior is supported in both Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.

satur9nine
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Nathan Kuchta
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  • It is a bit of a pain to merge the XML and weird that you have to start out with a non-template tile for secondary tiles, but this works thanks. – satur9nine Aug 28 '13 at 00:05
  • If you're not a big fan of working directly with the XML, there is a helper library included with many of the samples that can be used on the client or on a service. See http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/App-tiles-and-badges-sample-5fc49148. I'm not sure what you mean by starting with a non-template tile. Secondary tiles are just like the app's primary tile in that - they start with a static app-defined image, neither are "live" by default. – Nathan Kuchta Aug 28 '13 at 02:37