The coolest gadgets for your desktop. Comments (7) to “Desktop Gadgets”

With development computer technology and the emergence of new operating systems, developers began to come up with solutions for them large number various programs and elements. The purpose of these programs and elements is to improve the quality and user experience of operating systems. Gadgets are unique small programs, the purpose of which depends on the characteristics of each individual gadget. Gadgets are basically installed as programs and displayed on the desktop wherever or however the user wants. Many gadgets perform useful features, such as showing the processor load, the used RAM, display information from the Internet. There are also entertainment gadgets in the form of mini games and much more. You can download gadgets for Windows from us, free of charge and without registration on your desktop.

Gadgets are varied in themes and functions; each gadget has a lot of settings that allow you to customize the gadget as it is more convenient for you. We have collected a fairly large number of gadgets for Windows that you can choose and download, completely free of charge, without registration and any stupid SMS and file sharing services. Gadgets for Windows will give your desktop good functionality and a beautiful, stylish look. Gadgets are customizable in design and display, which allows you to select them in accordance with your chosen Windows theme or desktop background. In order for the gadgets to fit harmoniously into the interior of the monitor, we recommend that you also download along with them

28.12.2009 03:49

Gadgets (mini-applications) are small programs, displaying a variety of information on the Windows 7 desktop.

How gadgets work in Windows 7

A gadget, like a web page, consists of graphic images and files written in HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Therefore, to display gadgets, it is necessary that at least one browser is installed on the system. To use pre-installed (standard) Windows 7 gadgets, you must have a browser Internet Explorer. Some gadgets (for example, Weather) require an Internet connection, while other gadgets can work offline (for example, Clock).

The installation file of the widget is a regular zip archive with the extension .gadget. For a gadget to be displayed on the desktop, it must be installed and running.

To install the widget, double-click installation package gadget. The widget will then be added to your gadget collection, from where you can add it to your desktop.

The Desktop Gadgets Gallery is a panel that displays all installed gadgets. This panel is powered by the application sidebar.exe located in the folder %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar.

To open the Desktop Gadget Collection, right-click on the desktop and in the appeared context menu select Gadgets.

Adding gadgets to your desktop

2. Double-click one of the suggested gadgets.

Gadget menu

When you hover your mouse over a gadget, a small menu appears to the right of it.

Depending on the features of the gadget, this menu may contain buttons Close(removes the gadget from the Windows desktop), Options(displays additional settings), Size, Moving.

Removing a gadget

1. To remove a gadget from the collection, right-click on the desktop and select Gadgets.

2. Right-click on the widget you want to remove and select Delete.

After this, the widget will no longer be available in the Gadget Collection.

Recovering deleted gadgets

To restore everything standard gadgets Windows 7:

1. Open the Control Panel, set the view to “Category”.

2. Click .

3. In the section Desktop gadgets click Recovering desktop gadgets installed by Windows.

To restore a deleted third-party widget, simply install it again.

Turn Gadgets on or off

By default, gadgets are enabled in Windows 7. You can disable installing, viewing, and adding widgets to your desktop using Windows Features in Control Panel and using Local Desktop Editor. group policy(Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 7 Enterprise only).

Turn gadgets on or off using Control Panel

1. Open Control Panel (Large Icons View) > Programs and Features.

2. From the left menu, select Turn Windows features on or off.

3. To turn off the Gadgets feature, uncheck the Windows gadget platform. To enable Gadgets, select this checkbox.

4. Restart your computer.

Enable or disable gadgets using the Local Group Policy Editor

1. Open the Start menu, enter search bar and press Enter.

2. Perform the required action:

To disable the gadgets feature for your account, in the left menu of the Local Group Policy Editor, open Politics " Local computer» > User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows components> Desktop gadgets .

To disable the gadgets feature for all users on the computer, in the left menu of the Local Group Policy Editor, open Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Desktop Gadgets, on the right side of the Local Group Policy Editor window, double-click the option Disable desktop gadgets.

3. Select Turn on and press OK.

If this setting is enabled, desktop gadgets will be disabled. If this option is disabled or not specified, desktop widgets will be enabled.

4. Restart your computer.

Creating your own gadgets for Windows

If you are familiar with programming languages such as HTML and JavaScript, as well as cascading tables CSS styles, then you can use Donavan West's guide to creating Windows gadgets. The manual has been translated into Russian. Although this tutorial focuses on creating gadgets for Windows Vista, it covers the general principles of creating widgets that you need to understand the process.

1. Gadgets in Windows 7 can be freely moved with the left mouse button within the desktop. To move widgets closer together, press and hold the Shift key while moving the gadget.

2. So that the gadget is always displayed on top of all others open windows, right-click on it and select from the context menu that appears On top of other windows.

3. To hide all active gadgets, right-click on the Windows 7 desktop, select View and uncheck Show desktop gadgets. To make gadgets appear again, check this box.

4. To move all active gadgets to the foreground, press the combination Windows keys+G.

5. To adjust the transparency of a gadget, right-click on it and set the opacity level.

Pre-installed Windows 7 gadgets

Windows 7 comes with nine pre-installed gadgets (mini-applications):

Windows Media Center

This gadget is a convenient, customizable launcher Windows Media Center.

Currency

When connected to the Internet, the Currency gadget displays the value of the user's selected currencies, according to MSN Money providers. In total, the gadget can display from 2 to 4 currencies. This widget requires an Internet connection to work.

To add currency, click + in the lower right corner of the gadget. To remove currency, hover your mouse over it and in the right top corner click the red cross.

To change currency, click its name and select the desired currency in the list that appears.

Puzzle

Gadget "Puzzle" is a mosaic game. An Internet connection is not required for the gadget to work.

To view the picture you need to collect, click the “?” at the top of the widget.

To automatically assemble or shuffle the mosaic, click the arrow icon in the upper right corner of the gadget.

The timer can be paused by clicking on the clock in the upper left corner of the gadget.

To change the picture, right-click the widget and select Options.

Web Channel News Headlines

This gadget allows you to view news headlines from web channels (RSS feeds) without launching a browser (however, an Internet connection is required). The gadget displays news only from those sites whose RSS feeds are added to Internet browser Explorer. To view or change the list of RSS feeds, open Internet Explorer > Favorites > Channels Tab.

Any RSS feed added to Internet Explorer will become available for display in the Feed News Headlines gadget. For example, you can add our web feed to always know when something appears on our site. new article. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Launch Internet Explorer browser.

2. Enter in address bar the address of our RSS feed: http://www.site/feed/ and press Enter.

3. Click Subscribe to this channel.

CPU indicator

The CPU indicator gadget displays workload RAM(right) and processor (left) in real time. Additional settings does not have. An Internet connection is not required for the widget to work.

Calendar

Options and use the “…” button to specify the desired folder.

Here you can adjust the speed of changing the picture and select one of the transition effects from one image to another.

By default, images follow each other in the order in which they are sorted in the folder. The sequence of changing images in the gadget can be changed to random by checking the “Images in random order” checkbox.

The Clock gadget can display the time in any time zone known to the operating system Windows system. To make the Clock gadget display a time other than the default time selected in OS settings, right-click the widget and select Options. On the gadget settings page, select the desired time zone and click OK.

To display the time in multiple time zones on your desktop (like in Mission Control), launch the Clock gadget the required number of times and configure the desired time zone in each.

Also on the settings page you can select appearance gadget “Clock” and even assign a name to the clock that will be displayed on the dial.

Download gadgets for Windows 7

There are many sites on the Internet that offer gadget downloads. Because Windows 7 is new operating system, at the time of this writing, many of the gadgets available for download are written for Windows Vista. Most of them work quite well under Windows 7, but their functionality may change. At the same time, gadgets written for Windows 7 may be incompatible with Vista.

When downloading gadgets from third-party developers, you should pay attention to the bit depth and availability. Gadgets designed for 32-bit Windows 7 may not work on 64-bit Windows 7. Gadgets without digital signature may not install or work correctly in Windows 7. In addition, unscrupulous publishers distribute viruses and other malware under the guise of gadgets. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you download gadgets only from trusted sites.

Windows 7 components

Gadgets (Widgets) are one of the most controversial features in a windowed OS. Some users install them and don’t even imagine how they can fully use their PC without their help. Others don’t even know what it is, and cope quite successfully. Are there gadgets for Windows 10, what are they and how to install them? We will discuss the answer to these questions in detail later in the article.

Why did widgets disappear from Windows 10?

With the arrival of first 8 and then the tenth version, this issue was resolved because Microsoft decided to completely remove the function from the system for some reasons:

As unnecessary. A big emphasis in the new systems has been on live tiles, which, in some ways, work the same way as widgets. They display useful information, are updated in real time and look more relevant;
For security reasons. Here the developers, rather, said without any particular reason. Because it is hard to imagine that such a small component of the system as a widget can greatly influence security, and parts of its code can be used by attackers. Although this may have affected performance. You can check this by returning the functionality and .

Now gadgets for Windows 10 cannot be found on the official website.

However, there are no more widgets and the reasons are given. Most users simply agreed and started using tiles, but there are also those who do not want to deprive themselves of such a convenient opportunity and wondered how to install gadgets on Windows 10. For their sake, third-party developers have tried, creating software that copies the functionality of widgets as closely as possible and tells you how to install gadgets on your desktop in Windows 10.

How to install gadgets on the Windows 10 desktop using programs

8GadgetPack

Media center;
Movie Maker;
.NetFramework;
DirectX 9 versions and much more.

It is likely that, by rummaging around on the Internet, you can find other lesser-known solutions, but is this necessary, given that the ones described above allow you to return the functionality that was in 7 and even more.