Configure the Home Icon on the SharePoint App Bar
By default, the Home Icon at the top of the SharePoint App Bar links to the SharePoint Start Page. However it can be configured to display global navigation links to enable a consistent navigation experience for your users no matter where they are in SharePoint. So how do you do it?
1. First of all, you will need ensure you are a SharePoint admin in order to be able to configure the home icon.
2. Next, create a Communication site to act as your company intranet ‘hub’.
3. You will then need to register this site as a Home Site – which will formally label this as the main site of your SharePoint Portal. Note that this can only be done with a Communication site, which is why the step above is important! You can also only have one Home Site at any time.
To do this, you will need to use Powershell. If you haven’t already, download the SharePoint Online Management Shell to get started.
Open the SharePoint Online Management Shell and connect to your tenant by pasting in the following, replacing the url with your SharePoint admin center url:
Connect-SPOService -Url https://domain-admin.sharepoint.com
You will be prompted to enter your credentials (with admin access).
Next, paste in the following command, replacing the url with the Communication site you want to register as the Home Site:
Set-SPOHomeSite -HomeSiteUrl https://domain.sharepoint.com
You will be prompted to confirm the action by entering “Y”
4. OPTIONAL: Next, register your Home Site as a hub site by navigating to the SharePoint Admin Center, selecting your above site and clicking “Register as a Hub Site”. Note: If your site is not registered as a hub, you can configure the navigation links manually in the following steps, as opposed to using hub navigation.
5. Now head to your Home Site, click the Settings icon then “Global Navigation” and toggle “Enable global navigation” to on. (Note you will only see this option on your home site – it will not appear on any other sites). You can also change the title and add a custom icon here if you wish which will replace the Home Icon on the app bar.
6. Now you can go ahead and customise your navigation links!
On the Home Site / Hub site, click edit on the navigation bar along the top to customise your links. This can include drop down menus by adding sub links. As mentioned in step 4, if you did not register your site as a hub, you will be prompted here to manually configure your links by clicking “Edit Global Navigation”.
And there you have it! Your Global Navigation will now show on the app bar like this:
