Tip: Manage Your Windows 10 Devices

On Windows Weekly 478, Paul Thurrott has a tip for managing your Windows 10 devices. On the Microsoft account website, account.microsoft.com/devices, you can manage the devices that are associated with your Microsoft account. There are four types of devices there: Apps/games, Music with a Groove Music pass, Movies/TV, and hardware devices. Any time you sign into your Microsoft account on a device, it will show up in your devices list. From that list, you can trigger support incidents, find accessories, and even locate your devices. The hardware device list has no limit and you can sign into your Microsoft account from as many devices as you want. The content lists do have limits for how many devices you can use:

Apps/Games: Microsoft allows you to have apps and games installed on up to 10 devices. There is no limit to the amount of items you can remove from this list.

Music: Microsoft allows you to have up to 4 devices associated with the Groove Music pass, and you can only remove 1 device every 30 days from this list.

Movies/TV Shows: Microsoft allows you to have up to 5 devices for movies and TV shows, and you can only remove 1 device every 30 days.

Paul Thurrott recommends that anyone using Windows 10 look at these lists and keep maintain them regularly. Paul also recommends not using your Microsoft account when logging into a new device. Instead, you should sign in using a local account. Then go and rename that device to something that makes sense to you. Once that is done, log in using your Microsoft account. This will ensure that the device name that shows up online will be a name that you can identify, instead of the random device name that Microsoft would assign it. This is especially important when using OneDrive, so you'll be able to identify your devices there.