How To Make Windows 8.1 Slide to Shutdown Like Windows Phone

by Brian Burgess
3 min read

It’s easy to add the Slide to Shutdown capability you have in Windows Phone to Windows 8.1. All you need to do is move a few files. Here’s how.

aNewDomain.net — There are several ways to shut down Windows 8.1, but it’s easy to hack it to shut down like Windows Phone 8. All you need to do is move a few system files. This trick is handiest on touch-enabled Windows 8.1 devices. Here’s How To make Windows 8.1 slide to shutdown in the same way that Windows Phone 8 does.

Slide to Power Off Windows Phone

To shut down Windows Phone, all you do is gesture to Slide Down to Power Off. To do this, hold down the power button on your phone for a couple of seconds until you see the following screen. Then, like it says, slide down to power it off. Scroll below to see how you can get the same functionality in Windows 8.1.

sshot-1

How to add Slide to Shutdown to Windows 8.1

To get the same feature in Windows 8.1, navigate to:

C:\Windows\System32

Then, in the Search field, type: slidetoshut

This brings you to the SlideToShutDown.exe file. Right-click on it and send it to the Desktop to create a shortcut.

sshot-4

Once on your desktop, just double-click it. This creates the Slide to Shut Down capability on your PC screen, just like what you have on Windows Phone 8. Here’s a shot of it on my Surface RT tablet, below.

Swipe down to power off your system. Or click it with your mouse to shutdown your device.  If you don’t take any action, after 10 seconds it will go away.

Screenshot (111)

Now that the Slide to Shutdown icon is on your desktop, you probably want something that is more appealing to the eye than the default shortcut icon you see below. And it’s easy to do that, too …

sshot-2

Right-click the Shortcut icon and select Properties. Then, on the next window that appears, select Change Icon.

This will bring you to a directory in Windows that gives you some default icons to choose from. In this instance, I am satisfied with the ShutDown icon. But feel free to switch it to any icon you’re comfortable with.

Change Icon Screens

Also note that you can pin this to the Desktop taskbar or even to the Start screen for easier access. Just right-click the Shortcut icon. And, from the Context Menu, pin it to the Taskbar or to the Start screen.

pin

Here’s what it would look like pinned to the Taskbar.

on taskbar

And here is how it looks on the Start screen with its own tile.

Start Screen Tile

Not only is this tip useful and sorta fun, but your friends and colleagues will wonder why their Windows 8.1 systems don’t have that feature.

For aNewDomain.net, I’m How To gallery captain Brian Burgess.

Based in Pelican Rapids, MN, Brian Burgess led the relaunch of BYTE with Gina Smith, co-founded aNewDomain.net with Gina, John C. Dvorak and Jerry Pournelle in 2011, and serves as the editor-in-chief of GroovyPost.com. He is the How To gallery captain here at aNewDomain.net. Email him at Brian@aNewDomain.net or Brian@Groovypost.com and find him on Google + and on Twitter as @mysticgeek.

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5 Comments

  • While I appreciate you uncovering the .exe, the tip is silly, at best. I should put a shortcut somewhere that I can click, and thereafter be able to shut down? That saves zero time compared to either using Alt-F4 from the desktop or right-clicking the start menu and selecting shut down followed by the option you want

    Better: if you really want to use a shortcut to shut down, make that shortcut “shutdown -s -t’ 0” . It will do the shutdown thing immediately instead of requiring an extra step.

    WAIT, better still: put shutdown -s -t’ 0 in the Windows run box. access the run box ANY TIME with Win-R. Leave that command “first” in your run history. I do this; it means that ANY time I want to shut down, no matter what I’m doing or where I’ve navigated to, I hit Win-R, then . Takes literally a half-second.