How to create a shortcut for any "Modern" Windows app

By Whitson Gordon, Gawker Media

With Windows 10, lots of built-in apps (like the calculator) are now "Modern UI" apps. Other Modern UI apps (like Netflix) are a lot more useful now that you can run them in a window. There's just one problem: There's no obvious way to make shortcuts of these apps so you can put them on your desktop, or start them with an app like Launchy.

Luckily, there is a hidden way:

1. Open File Explorer and paste the following in the address bar: %windir%\explorer.exe shell:::{4234d49b-0245-4df3-b780-3893943456e1}

2. Press Enter. You should be greeted with a secret folder containing a bunch of random apps and actions.

3. Find the Modern app you want to create a shortcut to. Right-click on it and choose "Create shortcut". It'll show up on your desktop.

From there, you can do whatever you want with the shortcut-leave it on your desktop for quick launching, or-if you're a Launchy user like me-put it in a folder and add that folder to Launchy's catalog. It's annoying that you have to do it one-by-one, but I suppose it's better than nothing.

This trick has been around since Windows 8, but with Modern apps becoming more prevalent in Windows 10, this trick became more useful.