PowerToys
PowerToys copied to clipboard
microsoft
Desktop Gadgets from Windows 7.
Summary of the new feature/enhancement
Everyone loved the Windows 7 desktop gadgets and the number of possibilities they provided to make the desktop more organized. They provided a dashboard feel to the desktop and could be used to dock many statistical gadgets and other things like mini music players, notes, and so on...
Screenshots
(Images were taken from the internet)
It would be great to see Gadgets on Windows 10 as part of PowerToys, if not the mainstream OS. They were a great feature and it would be awesome to be able to use gadgets again.
Pretty much all the default ones like Clock, Calender, Mini Player, Albums and so on... But just like the Windows 7 gadgets, if support for third party gadgets could be added, that would be great. It would encourage a lot of quality gadgets and help keep the feature alive and active for a very long time.
Keep in mind the original gadget platform implementation was very dependent on an outdated version of the Trident rendering engine. Even if the original gadget platform code was open-sourced (which likely won't ever happen, as it was part of Windows core, and Microsoft is very allergic to open-sourcing parts of that codebase), such a project would run into a number of unavoidable bugs related to Internet Explorer being a newer version than what shipped with Windows 7 RTM. IMHO, attempting to recreate this would be a huge timesink for little gain.
That being said, many of the gadgets in the screenshots that @varungupta3009 posted above would make excellent PowerToys. I would suggest that they be reimplemented in WPF (or, over the long term, WinUI 3). This would enable animations and such in the UI, and it would also help with high-DPI scenarios (as the Windows 7 gadgets’ visuals were nothing more than one big folder of PNG files). Hope this helps!
Keep in mind the original gadget platform implementation was very dependent on an outdated version of the Trident rendering engine. Even if the original gadget platform code was open-sourced (which likely won't ever happen, as it was part of Windows core, and Microsoft is very allergic to open-sourcing parts of that codebase), such a project would run into a number of unavoidable bugs related to Internet Explorer being a newer version than what shipped with Windows 7 RTM. IMHO, attempting to recreate this would be a huge timesink for little gain.
That being said, many of the gadgets in the screenshots that @varungupta3009 posted above would make excellent PowerToys. I would suggest that they be reimplemented in WPF (or, over the long term, WinUI 3). This would enable animations and such in the UI, and it would also help with high-DPI scenarios (as the Windows 7 gadgets’ visuals were nothing more than one big folder of PNG files). Hope this helps!
You're right. I love the idea of having individual gadgets written in WPF/WinUI3 added as PowerToys without the Trident engine of Win7. And if third-parties want to create their own ones, they can easily add them to PowerToys. Thanks for the great suggestion!
I would suggest that they be reimplemented in WPF (or, over the long term, WinUI 3).
Would there be some sort of shared base library for all the reimplemented gadgets, and would that be a part of PowerToys? Or would each gadget have its own separate implementation?
xref #314
What I was thinking of specifically in #314 was to have live tiles on the desktop in the way that Customatic was going to (before the project was killed). Like this:
Certainly not the same as desktop widgets (though MS has talked about live tiles in general as a successor to desktop widgets, except they can't be on the actual desktop).
It may be tricky to hook into the system the way that might be required for this, but it seems like it was done OK while Customatic was active.
Love this concept, and the Clock "always on top" overlay for me would be the best addition.
With so many video conference calls, it would be great to have a clock "always on top", that you could place right over the meeting screen, so that you have the time within your eye line, without having to look conspicuously to the side (or to your wrist) to manage your time.
An add-on enhancement would be a countdown timer to your next meeting where it turns yellow with 10min to go, and red with 2min to go ... or something like that!
(... now I'm just dreaming out loud!)
Yeah, maybe, but in my case, I’d love it to be something that can be pinned to the desktop AND that you could configure to “keep on top” of other windows too (at the same time). Like a clock that is always on top, and can be dragged to anywhere on the screen/desktop.
I like the Live tiles on desktop idea. Maybe just have individual Live tiles arranged by the user among the regular files/shortcuts on the desktop. E.g. Live tile = "dynamic icon" (but of varying sizes, e.g. 1x1, 2x2, etc.).
Widget/Live tile that I would like to have is Ministocks - related to #16405
Widgets are back in Windows 11. https://www.windowslatest.com/?s=widgets We should have the ability to pin Windows 10/8 Live Tiles to the board.
hi all, for Dev Home is the solution for "power user" widgets. You can pin stuff like our CPU graph there or use the Dev Home dashboard.
if there is a power user widget you'd like to build out, please check out https://www.github.com/microsoft/devhome