I've tried various widgets on Windows out over the years, but I personally haven't found great use. Maybe the "post-it note" widget could be helpful, but a thousand unsaved tabs in Sublime Text...
Microsoft has been trying to solve the same UX problem since 1997: how to surface live information without making you launch an app. They've shipped six different implementations across nearly 30 years. Each one died from a different fundamental flaw - performance, security, screen space, privacy, engagement. And each death triggered the same reflex: containment.
I've tried various widgets on Windows out over the years, but I personally haven't found great use. Maybe the "post-it note" widget could be helpful, but a thousand unsaved tabs in Sublime Text works just as well, if not better!
Even when that third-party desktop customization app, Rainmeter, was popular (maybe it's still popular?), I gave it a try for a few things, but largely found it more work than it was worth. And none of the information was ever really that helpful to constantly see at a glance. On my iPhone, I use two widgets regularly: my weather app's and the built-in battery widget for AirPods and my Apple Watch. That's it. On my MBP, I've recently added a few widgets...and, once again, I don't look at them. They just clutter the desktop.
So it's interesting to see how often Microsoft has giveth and taketh away when it comes to widgets. Especially because I don't see many people using them. Do you all use widgets and find them helpful? Is there one iteration on Windows' widgets that you liked and used a lot?
I think widgets are counter to the Windows design ethos. macOS defined the desktop as a distinct place where you can launch an app and arrange your windows on the desktop to customize your...
I think widgets are counter to the Windows design ethos.
macOS defined the desktop as a distinct place where you can launch an app and arrange your windows on the desktop to customize your workflow in that app. Windows allows for the same kind of functionality, but you are more expected to launch programs in maximized windows. The program UI is defined by the developer and everything related to that program is contained in a single window.
On macOS, widgets make sense because you can arrange your windows to accommodate persistent widgets. The desktop is a persistent part of how the OS was designed to be used. On Windows, the desktop is where you start and end your day. You won’t see it in the middle of your workday, so desktop widgets are useless.
This is a good point. On Windows, I tend to have various programs maximized. And even if they're not, I'll sometimes tile multiple windows that do cover the whole desktop. But on Mac, I don't do...
This is a good point. On Windows, I tend to have various programs maximized. And even if they're not, I'll sometimes tile multiple windows that do cover the whole desktop.
But on Mac, I don't do that. Programs are rarely maximized/full-screened. I use multiple desktops a lot more, meaning there's always some space to the see the desktop. And I regularly use that one gesture to "sweep" all open windows out of the way temporarily to grab or look for something on the desktop. But even then, I rarely look at widgets. Maybe it's just a matter of finding the right widgets though.
That inclination towards keeping the screen full of maximized or tiled windows is part of what makes Windows poorly suited for my day to day use. Linux DEs/WMs mostly follow this pattern too and...
That inclination towards keeping the screen full of maximized or tiled windows is part of what makes Windows poorly suited for my day to day use. Linux DEs/WMs mostly follow this pattern too and so they’re a poor fit, too. I wonder if we’ll ever see “loose window”/desktop-peeking dominant environments beyond macOS.
I think if spatial computing ever takes off, your dreams will come true. Widgets make a lot of sense if your stock ticker widget is an AR application anchored to a wall in your office.
I think if spatial computing ever takes off, your dreams will come true. Widgets make a lot of sense if your stock ticker widget is an AR application anchored to a wall in your office.
I've never found widgets helpful, and I think it's because the information they display just doesn't change that often and, when it does, the changes really don't require immediate action on my...
I've never found widgets helpful, and I think it's because the information they display just doesn't change that often and, when it does, the changes really don't require immediate action on my part. The Windows 11 "lock screen" (or whatever they call it) shows some headlines and such, and I don't hate it because I can glance at it as I'm logging in and, if something sounds interesting, look up more details on my own. But I don't need the information in front of my face all day.
Check out the WinWidgets app/project on GitHub. You can make your own widgets that are just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I made one to load a note from Joplin and use it like a sticky note. An RSS...
Check out the WinWidgets app/project on GitHub. You can make your own widgets that are just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
I made one to load a note from Joplin and use it like a sticky note. An RSS reader should be a similar level of complexity.
Now this sounds interesting. In premise, where I could find widgets useful is where I have found them useful on my phone, quick ways to access self-hosted services and automation devices. So...
Now this sounds interesting. In premise, where I could find widgets useful is where I have found them useful on my phone, quick ways to access self-hosted services and automation devices. So whether I have Home Assistant set up, or I want to quickly add something to Sonarr/Radarr to download it, those would be things I could imagine widgets on my PC being useful for, maybe. Currently I just have bookmarks to those self-hosted services and I can just log in through a web page and do what I need, if my Sonarr/Radarr setup was better maybe I could trust a widget that just adds the movie/tv show and it auto searches but my setup is garbage and I end up manually selecting files through the web interfaces so the widget wouldn't necessarily be particularly helpful with my current setup.
Although I don't use windows widgets at all, I'll share where I've seen them used. When I worked IT in a call center, agents liked to scroll the news, stocks, and weather widget in the time...
Although I don't use windows widgets at all, I'll share where I've seen them used.
When I worked IT in a call center, agents liked to scroll the news, stocks, and weather widget in the time between calls because their PCs were locked down and they couldn't have their phones on them. It gave them something small to fiddle which was prefect for the use case.
Not saying the widgets Microsoft made are good, but they aren't useless.
I feel like the design ethos for many widgets is form over function: they look cool and/or pretty, but end up taking a lot of space with very little information density. Why would I want to...
I feel like the design ethos for many widgets is form over function: they look cool and/or pretty, but end up taking a lot of space with very little information density. Why would I want to dedicate 1/10th of my screen to have the current time, when all the information can be tucked away in a qmall corner of the screen? This ends up leading to widgets being hidden most of the time, defeating the "getting information at a glance" part of the requirements for them to be really useful.
Imagine what the world could have been if Google hadn't kneecapped and nuked iGoogle, I miss widgets and their possibilities - I have for years wanted to start building my own personal...
Imagine what the world could have been if Google hadn't kneecapped and nuked iGoogle, I miss widgets and their possibilities - I have for years wanted to start building my own personal iGoogle-like service purely for fun. The only existing one is ProtoPage, but there is the open source Boxento that is new to me.
They are both nowhere near as interactive or "featureful" as iGoogle was, but its something.
Wow, I haven't thought about iGoogle in what, 15+ years? I completely forgot what it was until I looked up a screenshot! Something like that really would be great. Not a shitty MSN-style home...
Wow, I haven't thought about iGoogle in what, 15+ years? I completely forgot what it was until I looked up a screenshot! Something like that really would be great. Not a shitty MSN-style home page, but one that shows what you actually want, like your home screen on your phone.
The only useful implementation of widgets I've seen is OSX's back in the mid-to-late 00s. They weren't tied to the desktop, but rather were brought up on their own "screen" with a key press (one...
The only useful implementation of widgets I've seen is OSX's back in the mid-to-late 00s. They weren't tied to the desktop, but rather were brought up on their own "screen" with a key press (one of the F keys, iirc?), which meant they were actually easy to check out as needed without minimizing everything you have open. This may be rose-tinted glasses though, as I didn't own a Mac in those days and my only exposure to them was a few college design courses held in the "mac lab"
Honestly though I don't really need widgets. They were always kind of a novelty and the only actually need I ever had for them was monitoring my memory usage on my laptop running Bazzite because I was running out of memory and the laptop would lock up (turns out it doesn't ship with a pagefile).
This is basically how I feel about widgets, also. On macOS, I only keep widgets in Notification Center (swipe in from right edge). On iOS, I only keep them in Today view (to the left of the lock...
This is basically how I feel about widgets, also. On macOS, I only keep widgets in Notification Center (swipe in from right edge). On iOS, I only keep them in Today view (to the left of the lock screen and home screen). In both cases, it's primarily the calendar month and the weather. Widgets on the desktop don't make sense to me because I pretty much always have windowed apps open.
Dashboard was cool because the widgets could be made by anybody and distribution was relatively unrestricted. The current model in which widgets must be owned by apps is much more restrictive and...
Dashboard was cool because the widgets could be made by anybody and distribution was relatively unrestricted. The current model in which widgets must be owned by apps is much more restrictive and pushes the barrier to entry much higher, meaning many niche use case widgets just don’t exist.
(Thinking about this now, perhaps the demise of Dashboard has helped fuel the Cambrian explosion of macOS menubar utilities.)
In the modern computing landscape, the old Dashboard model of widgets brings security concerns, but given that they were web-tech-based that’d be easily solved by reusing the same sandboxing and process isolation used by ”installed” Safari web apps.
This is one of those use cases where I could see having a very small secondary monitor strictly to host the widgets might be useful to a power user. On macOS, we do have the ability to put widgets...
This is one of those use cases where I could see having a very small secondary monitor strictly to host the widgets might be useful to a power user. On macOS, we do have the ability to put widgets in a few places, but I never use them. The primary reason I don’t is because they take up valuable screen real estate for things that I only want to occasionally check. Most widgets are worthless, except in some very niche or hyper specific use case scenarios.
I could see a stock ticker widget being useful if I were a day trader. I could also see the news widget being useful if I had a business centered around reporting on the news as it happens. But so many of the widgets are utterly useless, or just this side of useful. I don’t need the calendar widget, because that’s not how I interact with my reminders or my calendar scheduled events. But it might be useful for somebody else. I certainly don’t need a clock widget as I’ve got a human readable clock in the upper right hand corner of the Mac and the iPhone and the iPad. And on Windows, I have it in the bottom right corner. I have no idea why would ever need a contact widget. A lot of these widgets seem to be created on the assumption that somebody will use them eventually, but other than basically acting as a way to launch an app, server no other function.
The battery widget is a good example of a widget that is useful but could be more useful. On my iPhone, the widget tells me the current battery status of the iPhone itself, my Apple Watch, my AirPods Pro 2, and the AirPods case. But I get no information about my iPad mini or the Apple Pencil Pro that are sitting less than a meter away. The same widget in the control center on my Mac will also tell me my AirPods, the AirPods case, and my mouse battery level, but nothing about the iPhone, the Watch, or the iPad. I don’t understand why I can’t get all information on all my devices on every other device. This could be a useful feature, but it’s not living up to its full potential.
I think widgets continue to be a half-baked solution in search of a problem.
For your battery information woes, look into coconut battery on macOS. If you make the one time payment for the premium license, you can wirelessly monitor battery information for your other Apple...
For your battery information woes, look into coconut battery on macOS. If you make the one time payment for the premium license, you can wirelessly monitor battery information for your other Apple devices.
One of the biggest problems with Microsoft’s various implementations of widgets is that they feel like they’re there to push crap at me and/or hook into MS products I ultimately don’t use. Third...
One of the biggest problems with Microsoft’s various implementations of widgets is that they feel like they’re there to push crap at me and/or hook into MS products I ultimately don’t use. Third party integration is an afterthought, if it exists at all. This means they’re basically doomed to irrelevance from the start.
I have similar feelings about the side-feed-screen thing in Android. I don’t think it’s ever been of use to me. Android widgets in general are more useful than their MS counterparts, but high quality third party widgets are quite rare and so the outcome is almost the same: I don’t use the feature.
I've tried various widgets on Windows out over the years, but I personally haven't found great use. Maybe the "post-it note" widget could be helpful, but a thousand unsaved tabs in Sublime Text works just as well, if not better!
Even when that third-party desktop customization app, Rainmeter, was popular (maybe it's still popular?), I gave it a try for a few things, but largely found it more work than it was worth. And none of the information was ever really that helpful to constantly see at a glance. On my iPhone, I use two widgets regularly: my weather app's and the built-in battery widget for AirPods and my Apple Watch. That's it. On my MBP, I've recently added a few widgets...and, once again, I don't look at them. They just clutter the desktop.
So it's interesting to see how often Microsoft has giveth and taketh away when it comes to widgets. Especially because I don't see many people using them. Do you all use widgets and find them helpful? Is there one iteration on Windows' widgets that you liked and used a lot?
I think widgets are counter to the Windows design ethos.
macOS defined the desktop as a distinct place where you can launch an app and arrange your windows on the desktop to customize your workflow in that app. Windows allows for the same kind of functionality, but you are more expected to launch programs in maximized windows. The program UI is defined by the developer and everything related to that program is contained in a single window.
On macOS, widgets make sense because you can arrange your windows to accommodate persistent widgets. The desktop is a persistent part of how the OS was designed to be used. On Windows, the desktop is where you start and end your day. You won’t see it in the middle of your workday, so desktop widgets are useless.
This is a good point. On Windows, I tend to have various programs maximized. And even if they're not, I'll sometimes tile multiple windows that do cover the whole desktop.
But on Mac, I don't do that. Programs are rarely maximized/full-screened. I use multiple desktops a lot more, meaning there's always some space to the see the desktop. And I regularly use that one gesture to "sweep" all open windows out of the way temporarily to grab or look for something on the desktop. But even then, I rarely look at widgets. Maybe it's just a matter of finding the right widgets though.
That inclination towards keeping the screen full of maximized or tiled windows is part of what makes Windows poorly suited for my day to day use. Linux DEs/WMs mostly follow this pattern too and so they’re a poor fit, too. I wonder if we’ll ever see “loose window”/desktop-peeking dominant environments beyond macOS.
I think if spatial computing ever takes off, your dreams will come true. Widgets make a lot of sense if your stock ticker widget is an AR application anchored to a wall in your office.
I've never found widgets helpful, and I think it's because the information they display just doesn't change that often and, when it does, the changes really don't require immediate action on my part. The Windows 11 "lock screen" (or whatever they call it) shows some headlines and such, and I don't hate it because I can glance at it as I'm logging in and, if something sounds interesting, look up more details on my own. But I don't need the information in front of my face all day.
Make it easy for me to make custom ones about shit I actually care about and I’d use it (like my rss feeds).
But then they can’t jam ads
Check out the WinWidgets app/project on GitHub. You can make your own widgets that are just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
I made one to load a note from Joplin and use it like a sticky note. An RSS reader should be a similar level of complexity.
Now this sounds interesting. In premise, where I could find widgets useful is where I have found them useful on my phone, quick ways to access self-hosted services and automation devices. So whether I have Home Assistant set up, or I want to quickly add something to Sonarr/Radarr to download it, those would be things I could imagine widgets on my PC being useful for, maybe. Currently I just have bookmarks to those self-hosted services and I can just log in through a web page and do what I need, if my Sonarr/Radarr setup was better maybe I could trust a widget that just adds the movie/tv show and it auto searches but my setup is garbage and I end up manually selecting files through the web interfaces so the widget wouldn't necessarily be particularly helpful with my current setup.
It's pretty crazy how many things are dead simple on a phone but require a decent amount of setup on a computer these days.
Although I don't use windows widgets at all, I'll share where I've seen them used.
When I worked IT in a call center, agents liked to scroll the news, stocks, and weather widget in the time between calls because their PCs were locked down and they couldn't have their phones on them. It gave them something small to fiddle which was prefect for the use case.
Not saying the widgets Microsoft made are good, but they aren't useless.
What I read is:
Widgets: For when you can't do literally anything else.
OR
Widgets: Better than twiddling your thumbs.
I feel like the design ethos for many widgets is form over function: they look cool and/or pretty, but end up taking a lot of space with very little information density. Why would I want to dedicate 1/10th of my screen to have the current time, when all the information can be tucked away in a qmall corner of the screen? This ends up leading to widgets being hidden most of the time, defeating the "getting information at a glance" part of the requirements for them to be really useful.
Imagine what the world could have been if Google hadn't kneecapped and nuked iGoogle, I miss widgets and their possibilities - I have for years wanted to start building my own personal iGoogle-like service purely for fun. The only existing one is ProtoPage, but there is the open source Boxento that is new to me.
They are both nowhere near as interactive or "featureful" as iGoogle was, but its something.
Wow, I haven't thought about iGoogle in what, 15+ years? I completely forgot what it was until I looked up a screenshot! Something like that really would be great. Not a shitty MSN-style home page, but one that shows what you actually want, like your home screen on your phone.
The only useful implementation of widgets I've seen is OSX's back in the mid-to-late 00s. They weren't tied to the desktop, but rather were brought up on their own "screen" with a key press (one of the F keys, iirc?), which meant they were actually easy to check out as needed without minimizing everything you have open. This may be rose-tinted glasses though, as I didn't own a Mac in those days and my only exposure to them was a few college design courses held in the "mac lab"
Honestly though I don't really need widgets. They were always kind of a novelty and the only actually need I ever had for them was monitoring my memory usage on my laptop running Bazzite because I was running out of memory and the laptop would lock up (turns out it doesn't ship with a pagefile).
This is basically how I feel about widgets, also. On macOS, I only keep widgets in Notification Center (swipe in from right edge). On iOS, I only keep them in Today view (to the left of the lock screen and home screen). In both cases, it's primarily the calendar month and the weather. Widgets on the desktop don't make sense to me because I pretty much always have windowed apps open.
Dashboard was cool because the widgets could be made by anybody and distribution was relatively unrestricted. The current model in which widgets must be owned by apps is much more restrictive and pushes the barrier to entry much higher, meaning many niche use case widgets just don’t exist.
(Thinking about this now, perhaps the demise of Dashboard has helped fuel the Cambrian explosion of macOS menubar utilities.)
In the modern computing landscape, the old Dashboard model of widgets brings security concerns, but given that they were web-tech-based that’d be easily solved by reusing the same sandboxing and process isolation used by ”installed” Safari web apps.
This is one of those use cases where I could see having a very small secondary monitor strictly to host the widgets might be useful to a power user. On macOS, we do have the ability to put widgets in a few places, but I never use them. The primary reason I don’t is because they take up valuable screen real estate for things that I only want to occasionally check. Most widgets are worthless, except in some very niche or hyper specific use case scenarios.
I could see a stock ticker widget being useful if I were a day trader. I could also see the news widget being useful if I had a business centered around reporting on the news as it happens. But so many of the widgets are utterly useless, or just this side of useful. I don’t need the calendar widget, because that’s not how I interact with my reminders or my calendar scheduled events. But it might be useful for somebody else. I certainly don’t need a clock widget as I’ve got a human readable clock in the upper right hand corner of the Mac and the iPhone and the iPad. And on Windows, I have it in the bottom right corner. I have no idea why would ever need a contact widget. A lot of these widgets seem to be created on the assumption that somebody will use them eventually, but other than basically acting as a way to launch an app, server no other function.
The battery widget is a good example of a widget that is useful but could be more useful. On my iPhone, the widget tells me the current battery status of the iPhone itself, my Apple Watch, my AirPods Pro 2, and the AirPods case. But I get no information about my iPad mini or the Apple Pencil Pro that are sitting less than a meter away. The same widget in the control center on my Mac will also tell me my AirPods, the AirPods case, and my mouse battery level, but nothing about the iPhone, the Watch, or the iPad. I don’t understand why I can’t get all information on all my devices on every other device. This could be a useful feature, but it’s not living up to its full potential.
I think widgets continue to be a half-baked solution in search of a problem.
For your battery information woes, look into coconut battery on macOS. If you make the one time payment for the premium license, you can wirelessly monitor battery information for your other Apple devices.
One of the biggest problems with Microsoft’s various implementations of widgets is that they feel like they’re there to push crap at me and/or hook into MS products I ultimately don’t use. Third party integration is an afterthought, if it exists at all. This means they’re basically doomed to irrelevance from the start.
I have similar feelings about the side-feed-screen thing in Android. I don’t think it’s ever been of use to me. Android widgets in general are more useful than their MS counterparts, but high quality third party widgets are quite rare and so the outcome is almost the same: I don’t use the feature.