What’s old is new again. Nearly two decades ago, Microsoft introduced support for widgets (called gadgets) that displayed snippets of information in a sidebar for Windows Vista. It became an optional feature with Windows 7, and it was discontinued by the time Windows 8 arrived.

But Windows 11? It’s got widgets again, this time stuffed into a board that slides out from the side of the screen when you want it and disappears when you don’t. Now Microsoft has released a preview build of Windows 11 that builds on the existing widget functionality by allowing you to expand or collapse the size of the widget board, depending on whether you to fill your whole screen with widgets or just part of it.

At this point Microsoft says it’s “trying out some changes” to the widget view, so it’s unclear whether this feature will eventually graduate to stable builds of Windows 11. So far it’s only available to some members of the Windows Insider Preview program running Windows 11 dev builds.

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One reply on “Lilbits: Microsoft goes big on widgets for Windows 11, Zoom may launch email and calendar apps”

  1. More useless widgets. Bring back swipe in from the left for app management. This three-fingered nonsense tablets is plain silly!

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