Windows – Do Windows 8 “Live Tiles” actually use a lot of one’s monthly broadband data allowance

live-tilesstart-screenwindows 8

Windows 8 Live Tiles are a great way of showing constantly updated information regarding stock prices, weather bulletins etc on the Windows 8 Start Screen.

Is it plausible to suggest that they can actually (maybe "sneakily") use vast amounts of data in a short period of time & one could easily exceed their monthly data cap (very early on in a month) if they are not careful ?

(As might be seen from the TCPView software in Windows 8 showing that BITS was downloading masses of data – for no apparent reason).

If this is the case, is their a way to prevent or at least limit the amount of data each tile downloads (without actually turning the live tile "off") ?

Edit

Additionally from a logical perspective are certain Live Tiles more prone to using up more bandwidth quickly, because they download more data than other Live Tiles, therefore perhaps they should be avoided or kept to a minimum on the Windows 8 Start Screen ?

Best Answer

Because the amount of traffic caused by live tile updates differs from app to app, just check the numbers in the task manager:

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In my personal experience, the traffic caused by live tiles is negligible. If you're using apps that show images in their live tiles and those images change frequently, those tiles might cause a significant amount of traffic. You can keep an eye on the traffic caused by live tile updates in the task manager and disable apps that download too much content. Just right click on the app and select Turn live tile off:

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Whether you need to disable the live tiles for an app totally depends on your traffic plan and the advantage you gain from the tiles. For example, you certainly want to disable an app that wastes 100 MB of your traffic budget per month just for live tiles.

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