Still, let’s have a look, because if all you want is a clock and the clock on the Taskbar (you know, the lower right edge of your screen) isn’t enough, it is a solution. I looked around and did find someone who had cobbled together a Windows 7 widget utility that brings back the original Win7 desktop widgets, but it’s rather flakey from what I can ascertain. Still, the official Microsoft answer for Windows 10 would undoubtedly be “use the active tiles on the new start menu”, and that works when the menu’s visible. And while those active tiles remain accessible from the Start menu, the widgets never quite made it back when we were all dropped back onto the Desktop upon login. True, it did, but then Windows 10 came along and we went back to the Desktop with a Start menu.

In fact, it was way back in July of 2010 that Microsoft recommended everyone disable the Win7 Desktop Gadgets!īy Windows 8, the logic was that the start screen would give you everything you wanted, whether it was a weather widget, a clock, a stock ticker or anything else.

It was definitely a really cool concept and there were a number of slick widgets people created, but there was one major issue that caused Microsoft to drop it from Windows 8: security.

Ah yes, the old Desktop Widgets and side panel from Windows 7 days.

Desktop note widget