There’s still no promise they are going to be released

Apr 1, 2016 22:37 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft’s recent tease that something “big” is coming for live tiles at Build 2016 got everyone excited pretty much because they thought the company finalized work on interactive tiles and could release them to users in a future update.

And while no news in this regard has been provided, it appears that interactive live tiles still exist in some form at Microsoft, but the company still can’t promise they’re going to be released.

First and foremost, their purpose. Interactive live tiles are an evolved version of the current concept that allows you to perform a specific action without actually launching the app. For example, a music app live tile allows you to control playback without the need for opening the app so that you can play, pause, or skip to next track straight from the live tile.

Interactive live tiles still possible

This concept was first brought into the spotlight in 2014 when Microsoft’s Research division created an early version of the interactive live tiles and suggested that at some point in the future they could be released to users.

Although that’s still the plan, rumor has it that Microsoft continues to look at interactive live tiles as a possible Windows 10 feature in the coming updates, but the company needs to improve the concept before promising anything.

In other words, yes, interactive live tiles are still on the table at the moment, but Microsoft is still unsure whether it should release them or not because it’s not entirely satisfied with the way they work.

In the meantime, Microsoft has announced chaseable live tiles, which allow users to launch apps directly to the information displayed by the tile. This is more like a quick way to access the new information shown in the title, as the existing configuration only launches the app and needs you to manually navigate to the updated content.