Desktop widgets for Windows 11: how to put them on your desktop

Desktop widgets on Windows 11 come in two kinds. Windows' own widgets open in a panel, the Widgets board, and close when you click away. Widgets that stay on the wallpaper, the way gadgets did on Windows 7, need an app. In short:

1. 1
   Step 1: Decide what you want to see

   A clock and the weather, your CPU and memory, today's screen time, a habit, a focus timer. Two or three things you check every day decide the app.

2. 2
   Step 2: Pick an app

   Rainmeter to design every pixel, BeWidgets or Widget Launcher for ready-made clocks, weather and meters from the Microsoft Store, TimeWell for screen time, habits and focus. We make TimeWell, so weigh our view accordingly.

3. 3
   Step 3: Install it from a source you trust

   Use the Microsoft Store, the developer's own site, or winget in Terminal, not a download-mirror site.

4. 4
   Step 4: Add a widget, place it and lock it

   Pick a widget and a size or skin in the app, drag it to a clear patch of wallpaper, then lock its position if the app offers that.

The Widgets board is a panel of small cards (the weather, a stock watchlist and more), with a news feed Microsoft calls Discover one click away in its navigation bar. It is built in and quick to reach, but you open and close it; it never sits on your desktop. Microsoft's guide to widgets in Windows covers every option; these are the ones most people need.

Open it

• Press Windows key + W.
• Select the Widgets button on the taskbar, which usually shows the current weather. If Open Widgets board on hover is on, pointing at it is enough.
• On a touch screen, swipe in from the side of the screen.

Add, resize and arrange widgets

1. 1
   Step 1: Add one

   Select + to open the widget picker. More widgets come from the Widgets page in the Microsoft Store.

2. 2
   Step 2: Resize it

   From the widget's more options button, choose Small, Medium or Large, where offered.

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   Step 3: Move it

   Drag it by its header to a new place on the board.

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   Step 4: Change or remove it

   From the same button, choose Customize widget (to change a weather city, say) or Remove widget.

Make it quieter, or hide it

• Turn off the news. In the board's settings, under Dashboards, turn Discover off.
• Stop it opening by accident. In the board's settings, turn off Open Widgets board on hover, so it opens only when you click.
• Remove the badges. In the board's settings, go to More settings > Notifications and turn off Show badges on the taskbar.
• Hide the button. Right-click the taskbar, choose Taskbar settings (that is Settings > Personalization > Taskbar), and under Taskbar items turn Widgets off. Windows key + W still opens the board.

Expect some of this to shift. In May 2026 Microsoft began testing quieter defaults for Widgets with Windows Insiders in the Experimental channel, changing when the board opens and when it shows badges, and it is pulling Widgets and the Discover feed further apart.

No. As of October 2026, Microsoft's own documentation puts Windows widgets in just two places, the Widgets board and the lock screen, and Windows has no setting that pins one to the desktop the way Windows 7 gadgets sat there. The changes Microsoft announced for Widgets in May 2026 were about making them quieter, not about moving them. Two related things do exist.

Widgets on the lock screen

On an up-to-date Windows 11 PC, open Settings > Personalization > Lock screen and look under Widgets. Select Add widget to add one, drag widgets to reorder them, or set Widgets to off to hide them all. For now, only widgets that come in a small size can go on the lock screen, and you see them only there.

Pinned widgets in Xbox Game Bar

Xbox Game Bar (Windows key + G) has its own widgets, from screen capture to Xbox chat, and a widget that supports pinning can stay on screen after Game Bar closes. A pinned one floats on top of your apps rather than sitting on the wallpaper, which suits a game better than a desk. For widgets that live behind your windows, every route goes through an app.

These are the desktop widget apps worth considering as of October 2026, checked against each one's own site or Store listing. We make TimeWell, so weigh our view accordingly; it does a different job from the others.

Rainmeter: the most freedom, the most effort

Rainmeter has been free and open source since 2001 and is still actively developed: its latest release came out on 12 October 2026, alongside a first release candidate for Rainmeter 5.0. Each widget is a skin built from measures, which gather data such as CPU load or the weather, and meters, which draw it as text, images and bars. You write skins as short text files, so most people start from a community skin and adjust it.

The trade-off is effort: a polished desktop can take an evening of downloading, editing and lining things up, and its memory and CPU use depend on the skins you load and how often they refresh. Rainmeter isn't in the Microsoft Store; get it from rainmeter.net, or run winget install --id Rainmeter.Rainmeter in Terminal.

BeWidgets and Widget Launcher: ready-made, from the Store

For widgets on your wallpaper in five minutes, start here. BeWidgets, rebuilt for version 1.0 and made for Windows 11, lets you adjust colours, fonts and layouts, has light and dark themes, and can switch between saved layouts. Widget Launcher has been in the Store since 2013 and has the wider built-in set, with world clocks, RSS feeds, sticky notes, converters and a calculator. Both are free, and both install and update through the Microsoft Store.

GadgetPack: the Windows 7 gadgets

GadgetPack, formerly 8GadgetPack, installs a modified copy of the gadget platform from Windows 7, with a set of gadgets, on Windows 10 and 11. It is free, and its latest version came out in September 2026. If you miss a particular gadget, it is the way back.

Looking for a Rainmeter alternative?

• Pick Rainmeter if you enjoy tinkering and want a desktop no one else has.
• Pick BeWidgets for good-looking clocks, weather and photos with no code.
• Pick Widget Launcher for the widest set of everyday tools: world clocks, feeds and converters.
• Pick TimeWell if what you want on your wallpaper is your own day: screen time, habits and a focus timer.

TimeWell is a screen time app for Windows, and its desktop widgets show what it records. They come in iOS-style sizes, small, medium and large, and sit on the wallpaper beneath your windows, so they never cover what you are working on.

• Screen Time. Small shows today's total, a bar towards your daily goal and the last twelve hours; medium, the total, the hourly chart and your top four apps; large adds a goal ring, the comparison with your average, pickups and notifications.
• Habits. Small shows one habit's last seven weeks; medium shows one habit with its streak and about three months; large shows today's habits with their graphs. Click a check-in habit on the widget to tick it off. Setting habits up is in our habit tracker for Windows guide.
• Focus. A small square: one click starts or pauses a focus session, and the ring counts it down. The timer itself is in our guide to a Pomodoro timer for Windows.

They are light. The widgets cost about 2 MB of memory, and the tracker behind them, written in Rust, waits for Windows to tell it when something changes and sits at about 0% CPU while you work, in Windows' Efficiency mode.

Turn on TimeWell's desktop widgets

1. 1
   Step 1: Open Settings

   In TimeWell, select Settings. The Desktop widgets card is at the top. If you haven't installed TimeWell yet, start at the download page.

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   Step 2: Choose a widget and a size

   Under Widget, pick Screen Time, Habits or Focus; under Size, pick Small, Medium or Large (Focus comes small only). A preview shows the result.

3. 3
   Step 3: Add it

   Select Add to desktop. The widget appears on your wallpaper, and the card lists it under On your desktop.

4. 4
   Step 4: Place it

   Drag it where you want it. Click it to open TimeWell on that page: Overview for Screen Time, Habits for Habits, Focus for Focus.

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   Step 5: Right-click for options

   Change its Size, pick which Habit a small or medium Habits widget shows, turn on Lock Positions, or choose Remove Widget.

What TimeWell won't do: it has no clock, weather or system-monitor widgets, so pair it with an app above for those. It doesn't block apps or websites, and it runs only on Windows 10 and 11, with no phone app. What it records stays on your PC and is never uploaded. Every widget is yours for the first 7 days; after that TimeWell Free keeps one small Screen Time widget, and Pro, a one-time payment for up to two PCs, keeps them all.

• Keep it to a few. Three or four widgets you read beat a wall of them you stop seeing after a week.
• Choose glanceable ones. A good widget answers one question in a second: what time it is in Tokyo, how long you've been at the screen today, whether you've done today's habit.
• Give them their own corner. Widgets on the wallpaper sit behind your windows, so put them where you'll see them when you minimise a window.
• Mind performance. Each widget app runs in the background. Open Task Manager with Ctrl + Shift + Esc and check the Memory column now and then; swap out anything heavy.
• Let the board do the rest. For news, the weather forecast and stocks, the Widgets board is a keystroke away and takes no desktop space.

If you're setting up a new PC, our guide to the best apps for Windows 11 covers what else is worth installing.