Classic Shell can disable any part of Modern UI, and it can boot you directly into the Desktop. These options are in the settings. To access the Metro Windows 8 start menu, you can hold shift and click the start menu or just click on 'Start Screen' which will be in the new menu. How to keep the Windows 8.1 Modern UI out of your way. The Metro interface in Windows 8.1 makes sense on a touch-enabled device, but on a traditional computer, it's only an afterthought. In the first iteration of Windows 8, it was hard to get around on the desktop without the Start screen, hot corners, app switcher bar and other elements.

One of the most annoying features of Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 are the touch gestures for indirect touch devices such as trackpads (touchpads). These gestures invoke various aspects of the Modern UI such as Charms, App Switcher, App bar etc. On the Desktop, these gestures aren't of much use and they often get triggered accidentally when you use your touchpad. Even if you disabled on-screen mouse pointer gestures for the Modern UI, which are triggered from hot corners, these annoying gestures remain enabled and popup at the most inopportune times. Let us see how to disable them.

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The on-screen hot corners which open various aspects of the Metro UI can easily be disabled using apps such as Winaero Charms Bar Killer or Classic Shell. Even though Windows 8.1 comes with built-in options to disable the top left and top right hot corners, setting the options on the Taskbar Properties Navigation tab disables these features globally, even inside Metro apps. Instead if you use apps like Classic Shell to disable hot corners, they get disabled only on the Desktop but remain operational inside Modern apps and the Start screen, where they can be useful.

As for indirect touch gestures, Microsoft worked with various touchpad vendors to explicitly enable these in the drivers for these touchpads. There are multiple edge swipe gestures:

• Swiping in from the left edge of the touchpad towards the center shows the app switcher or switches to the most recently used Metro app
• Swiping in from the right edge of the touchpad towards the center shows the Charms
• Swiping in from the top edge of the touchpad towards the center shows the App Bar (if you are in a Metro app)
  ....and others

These third party touchpad drivers often integrate with your Mouse Control Panel, so that is where you must go to disable them. Open Control Panel (see how) and then open Mouse settings. There are multiple touchpad vendors and each vendor has its own settings UI to control these. Let us see how to disable these one by one:

Synaptics touchpad

1. Click the Device Settings tab in the Mouse Control Panel.
2. Click on the Settings button.
3. Uncheck the option 'Enable Edge Swipes' and click OK.

   Synaptics touchpad settings

Lenovo UltraNav touchpad

1. Click the UltraNav tab in the Mouse Control Panel.
2. Under the TouchPad section, click the Settings button.
3. Expand the Application Gestures section and click on Edge Swipes.
4. Uncheck 'Enable Edge Swipes'.

   UltraNav touchpad settings

Alps touchpad

1. Click the EdgeAction (TM) tab in the Mouse Control Panel.
2. Uncheck the gestures you don't want (Left/Right/Top/Top Left EdgeAction), and then click OK.

Elan touchpad

1. Click the ELAN tab in the Mouse Control Panel.
2. Click the Enable Device button if that button is disabled, then click Options.
3. Click Edge Swipe and disable them.

   Elan touchpad settings

Logitech touchpad

1. Open Logitech SetPoint Settings.
2. Click the section called Navigate Windows (with the icon of the black pointing hand)
3. Uncheck any options you want. Only Switch applications, Show Charms and Show Windows 8 App Bar are 1-finger gestures, the rest are multi-touch so you are unlikely to trigger them accidentally. Click OK.

   Logitech touchpad settings

Dell Touchpad

1. Open the Mouse Control Panel and you will see the Dell Touchpad tab.
2. Click the link called 'Click to change Dell Touchpad settings'.
3. Another window will open. Click the Gestures section there.
4. You can turn off the gestures you don't want individually or turn off gestures completely. Then click the Save button and close the window.
   

ASUS Smart Gesture touchpad

1. In the notification area (system tray), click the icon for ASUS Smart Gesture touchpad. The icon may be hidden in the overflow area of the tray, in that case, click the tiny arrow and then click the icon.
2. Click the Edge Gesture tab.
3. Uncheck any options you don't want: Toggle Charm Bar (right edge), Toggle Menu Bar (top edge) and Switch Running Applications (left edge). Then click OK.

Often various hardware OEMs (Lenovo, Samsung, HP) rebrand these touchpad driver settings in the Mouse Control Panel so the exact name of the tab may be different. For example, if you have OEM drivers for the touchpad installed, then the tab may be named differently. But the settings UI should be more or less the same and it should be easy enough for you to figure where to disable these annoying swipe gestures. The touchpad settings will in a majority of cases be in either the Mouse Control Panel or in the taskbar notification (tray) area.

Finally, if you have a relatively new PC with a modern Precision Touchpad designed to work with Windows 8.1, then you can disable these gestures right from PC Settings.

1. Press the Win + I keys together on your keyboard and click PC Settings. Go to PC and devices -> Mouse and touchpad.Tip: You can create a shortcut to directly open Mouse and Touchpad settings. See how.
2. If you have a precision touchpad, then there will be options to disable those edges swipes/gestures there.
3. Turn off the option 'Enable swiping in from the left or right edge'.

   Windows 8.1 Touchpad settings

   That's it. Now those touch gestures won't bother you any more. Works like a charm, oops, pardon the pun...actually it works quite unlike a charm! :)

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There are plenty of pages on the web that describe how to boot/login directly to the desktop instead of the apps screen. For example:

That is great but whenever I press the Windows Key, it switches to the apps screen (aka Metro).

In Windows 7, pressing the Windows Key, simply pops up the Start Menu. I know Windows 8.x no longer has a Start Menu, but if right-click the bottom-right icon, I get something close to it:

Is there a way to uninstall that Metro/apps screen completely so that pressing the Windows Key invokes the semi-Start menu pictured above?

Update: Why this isn't a duplicate as suggested below: because I want to uninstall the Windows 8.1 apps screen completely, not just boot/login directly to the desktop.

Mithrandir

3 Answers

You can use 'Classic Shell', it can be found here: http://www.classicshell.net/Not only will it replace the sad excuse for a start menu in Windows 8, it will allow you to customize it to your heart's content. This is by far the best replacement I have used.
Don't be fooled by the webpage, it looks very stock and professional once installed. The original Windows start icon can be kept.

When installing, you have an option to only install the start menu. The package includes a classic file browser which you may not want.

The commercial Start8 is essentially the same, but Classic shell has more features and is free.

Is there a way to uninstall that Metro/apps screen completely so that pressing the Windows Key invokes the semi-Start menu pictured above?

In Classic Shell you can configure that menu to come up when you right click the start button. You can also add shortcuts to the start menu for these menu items.

Classic Shell can disable any part of Modern UI, and it can boot you directly into the Desktop. These options are in the settings.

To access the Metro Windows 8 start menu, you can hold shift and click the start menu or just click on 'Start Screen' which will be in the new menu. You can configure an 'Apps' menu item that will allow you to open any Windows Store App without using Metro.

To see Metro Apps in the Taskbar and to see the Taskbar in Metro Apps, see this page:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/use-the-taskbar
If you don't see this option, make sure all the latest updates are installed. You may need to run Windows Update and reboot several times.

Here are a few examples, there are many possible configurations:

If you don't mind spending five bucks, there's Start8. No relationship except that I'm a happy customer of theirs.

I've also heard really good things about Classic Start. It's free and apparently more feature-ful, but it comes with no obligation of support.

Alternatively, of course, you could always 'upgrade' to Windows 7. :p

Jamie HanrahanJamie Hanrahan

To keep metro out of your way you can set it up as you want with its new settings. Right-click the taskbar, click Properties and select the Navigation tab in the resulting screen. Here's where you can tame the majority of the annoying Metro features that pop up. You can disable hot corners, the app switcher bar, and most importantly, boot directly to the desktop.

Disable Metro Screen Windows 8.1

vembutechvembutech

Disable Metro Ie In Windows 8.1

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