Over the years, Microsoft has tried a few different ways of providing at-a-glance information inside the main Windows interface. In Windows Vista and 7 we had gadgets, which then turned into Live Tiles in Windows 8 and 10. Those disappeared in the move to Windows 11, to be replaced by a set of widgets that live in their own slide-out drawer.
Windows 11 is limited to a curated selection of built-in widgets, but that will soon be changing. Microsoft recently announced that developers will be able to start creating their own widgets for Windows 11 this year, using a framework called Adaptive Cards. If you’re fluent in JSON you can try it out now at adaptivecards.io.
Not everyone wants to get hands- on with code, however, and frankly not everyone loves Windows 11 widgets anyway. Rather than hiding information away in a panel, there’s much to be said for the old way of displaying widgets on the desktop, especially in these
