Desktop gadgets are capable of performing various functions: show time and weather, CPU and memory status, provide fast access to mail and other frequently used applications. But in the Windows 8 operating system, by clicking right click mouse on the desktop, you will not find such a familiar application.

Since the popularity of using gadgets among users has not gone away, in this article we will figure out how to return gadgets to desktop in Windows 8.

I'll start with a simple program Gadgets Revived, which will allow you to return standard gadgets to your desktop. Download it by following the link. There should be no difficulties during the installation process - everything is extremely simple.

Now click on a free area of ​​the desktop and select “Gadgets”.

A window will open that is familiar to those who have used gadgets in the Windows 7 operating system. Drag the desired gadget using the mouse to the desktop.

When you hover your mouse over the gadget, additional buttons appear. With their help, you can move or delete a gadget, change its size or appearance.

A good alternative to the program described above may be the program for working with widgets XWidget. To download the program and read a description of how to work with it, follow the link.

In XWidget you can edit widgets yourself using the built-in editor, as well as browse the catalog of available widgets and install them on your computer.

After the program is installed on your computer, three widgets will appear on the screen. You can leave them or delete them.

When you right-click on the widget, a context menu appears.

Here you can view information about the widget - “Options”, hide it or close it. By clicking on the “Edit” button, you can edit the selected widget to your liking in the editor.

If you want to view other widgets and download them to your computer, click Gallery. You can read more about how to download and install the widget by following the link (given above) to the program description.

By clicking on the “Widget” item in context menu, a list of additional functions will open. For example, here you can change the location of the widget and its size, and make it opaque.

In the “XWidget Menu” item you can go to the program settings. If some widgets do not display correctly on the desktop, select "Restart XWidget".

In general, with the help of the described programs, you can install gadgets and widgets for Windows 8. Choose what is right for you, and then working on your computer will become much easier: the time, processor load, notes and much more will be displayed.

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As many must know, Microsoft has removed support for desktop gadgets in their latest operating systems oh Windows 8.1 and windows 10. We already wrote about why they did this on home page our site. You can return your favorite gadgets to Windows 10/8.1 using special programs which are called 8GadgetPack and Desktop Gadgets Installer, available for download on our website completely free of charge. Anyone can do this computer user with minimal knowledge. Below we will take a closer look at both programs that will help you install any gadgets in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

We present to your attention one of two programs that, in 1 minute, can return support for your favorite desktop gadgets to operating systems. windows systems 10 and windows 8. After installing the Desktop Gadgets Installer, you will again be able to install gadgets, including those from Windows 7, in the above versions of windows.

How to install gadgets in Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 using Desktop Gadgets Installer?

1. Download the Desktop Gadgets Installer program from the link below;

2. Launch the downloaded file;

3. Select the installation language;

4.Install the program by clicking on the “Next” buttons at the bottom of the window that opens;

5. After the program is installed, the “Gadgets” menu item will appear in the desktop context menu (called by right-clicking on any free space on the desktop), as in Windows 7.

6. By selecting this menu item, you will be taken to the standard window for setting up and selecting desktop gadgets for Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

8GadgetPack program like Desktop Gadgets Installer is designed to bring back support for desktop gadgets in Windows 10 and Windows 8.1. But there is one difference from the program above. It not only includes support for gadgets, but also installs a ready-made set of gadgets (about 50 pieces) into the system, which includes weather, processor and memory temperature gadgets, side panel gadgets and much more.

Installed 8GadgetPack is like a regular program. After downloading installation file, launch it and follow the instructions of the installation wizard by clicking on the “Next” or “Next” buttons at the bottom of the window. After which, as in the case with Desktop Gadgets Installer, In the desktop context menu (called by right-clicking on any free space on the desktop), the “Gadgets” menu item will appear, by going into which you can drag installed gadgets onto the Windows 10/8.1 desktop.

Download 8GadgetPack

Much to the regret of many gadget fans, Microsoft company decided to remove this functionality from my new version OS, citing “increased vulnerability” and a potential source of malware infection. The step was somewhat strange, but, fortunately, an alternative was found very quickly, in this moment There are several third-party product options available that bring back gadget support to Windows 8 and 8.1. We will consider the most popular, functional and stable from our point of view.

Gadgets Revived

The developers quite succinctly gave the name to their brainchild, because translated from English “revive” means to revive, resurrect. We boldly called them developers, of course. Rather, these guys transferred the functionality of the panel Windows gadgets on the updated G8 rails, but many thanks to them for this. The installer can be downloaded both from us and using the official website.

Installing Windows Desktop Gadgets

I don’t know why the installer is called “Windows Desktop Gadgets”, in general it’s logical and okay. We launch, make sure that Russian and English languages and confirm the installation. Hot on our heels, we can make sure that the familiar gadget panel or Gadget Sidebar has appeared in the system. It became available in the context menu of the Worker Windows desktop, and is also present at " Control Panel» → « Design and personalization» → « Desktop gadgets" Great, all that remains is to test the existing gadgets and install a couple of third-party ones to complete the experiment.

Checking existing gadgets and installing new ones

We transfer the “Clock” and “CPU indicator” gadgets to the Desktop, they work correctly, the time shows the correct one. When testing the “exchange rate”, for some reason the panel asked to reboot, but after a second it continued working as normal, everything is fine.

It's time to install some new gadgets. We go to and select, for example, Simple Clock and Yandex.Weather, download, install. Both gadgets “landed” normally on Windows 8.1, the time and weather are shown correctly. Hooray!

It is worth noting that testing was specifically carried out under Windows control 8.1, as the most recent and supported version of the G8. We also cannot fail to mention an alternative project for returning gadgets to Window 8 - 8GadgetPack. Initially, there was an idea to describe both applications, but... Gadgets Revived turned out to be quite a worthy option, it was decided not to create confusion and leave it. If something changes in the future, we will keep 8GadgetPack in mind.

8GadgetPack is a tool that will help you return familiar gadgets to your desktop in Windows 8, which help you quickly get necessary information(clock, calendar, weather, exchange rates, system and so on). Gadgets are installed the same way in a simple way, as before. The program comes with 56 gadgets (official from Microsoft, as well as the most popular ones), and also includes the 7 Sidebar gadget, which simulates a sidebar of gadgets Windows Vista. The program has a set of standard and some additional gadgets, and also supports the installation of new ones.

System requirements:
Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10 (32-bit & 64-bit)

Torrent Gadgets for Windows - 8GadgetPack 23.0 in detail:
A special feature of the program is a convenient window with settings “8GadgetPack Tools”, which contains the following options:
disable autoloading of the program;
reset the settings of all gadgets (return to the state as after installation);
visit the program website;
leave feedback;
uninstalling the application

List of gadgets:
7 Sidebar - Helmut Buhler
Agenda - Ronnie
All CPU Meter - AddGadgets.com
·App Launcher - Dean Laforet
Calendar - Microsoft
Clipboarder - Helmut Buhler
Chameleon Weather - gersma
·Clock - Microsoft
Control System - AddGadgets.com
CPU Meter - Microsoft
CPU Utilization - Jonathan Abbott
Currency - Microsoft
·Currency Meter - AddGadgets.com
·Custom Calendar - Home Cooked Gadgets
Date Time - Chia-Wei Chang
Desktop Feed Reader - Cristian Patrasciuc
Digiclock - Gersma
·Digitalclock - schnawel007
DriveInfo - Kris Thompson
Drives Monitor - Igor M. Bushin
Drives Meter - AddGadgets.com
Feed Headlines - Microsoft
FlipClock - Ciro Ippolito
·Glass Calendar - gersma, modded by digitalmaxx
Glassy CPU Monitor - Helmut Buhler
·Glassy Network Monitor - Helmut Buhler
·GPU Meter - AddGadgets.com
HUD Time - Factor Mystic
iBattery - Vitim
Launch Control - Kinesys Ltd
MiniRadio - Ronnie
MSN Weather - Microsoft
·Multi Meter - SFkilla
My Weather - Pat Possible
Network Meter - AddGadgets.com
Network Monitor II - Igor M. Bushin
Network Utilization - Jonathan Abbott
·Picture Puzzle - Microsoft
POP3 Mail Checker - Thomas Pleasance
·Power Status - Orbmu2k
Recycle Bin - Eiskalter Engel
Reminder (Denk-Daran) - dahi24
Remove Drive Safely - Plamen Todorov
searchALL Gadget - Jayden Howard
ShutdownRestart - Midnight Mick
Slide Show - Microsoft
Sticky Notes - Microsoft
Sticky Notes Online - SharPra
System Monitor II - Igor M. Bushin
·Top Five - Orbmu2k
·Top Process Monitor - Igor M. Bushin
·Turn off PC - Carlos A. Priale Condori
·Unit Converter - GadgetWE
Volume Control - Orbmu2k
WeatherCenter - hadj
Weather Meter - AddGadgets.com
·?????????? - 66turn

What's new in version:
·Made some usability tests and quite some issues came up!
·Added newsletter option so you can get notified about updates via mail.
·Fixed rare crash in Clipboarder when opening a link.
·Added workaround for a bug in MS Word when copying a formula while Clipboarder is running (Word crashes when the user copies a formula and then the textformat of the clipboard is requested.
·Clipboarder detects this now and skips the text formats).
·Added also another workaround for a minor bug in Word: When a certain clipboard format is requested Word adds a favorit inside the document.
·That format is now skipped as well.
·Fixed a bug with the "Enable unformatted paste" option in Clipboarder when used with the right shift-button.
·Clipboarder now handles images with transparency copied in browsers correctly.
·Added Date Time, Digitalclock, Turn off PC, CPU and Network Utilization Gadgets.
·Removed Google Mail gadget (it no longer works).
·You can place gadgets on the sidebar whereever you want now without snapping while holding Shift.
·Added workaround for a bug that caused several gadgets to fail sometimes during startup.
Fixed a bug that caused gadgets to go behind the sidebar sometimes. Fixed many minor issues.

With the development of modern operating systems, new ones appear additional features and some disappear. This is what happened with widgets. This article will discuss what widgets and gadgets are, as well as what programs exist to install and configure them.

What are gadgets and why are they used?

Gadget is another name special utilities, which first appeared with Windows 7. There they were called widgets.

Widgets are a complete application designed to information display on the user's desktop. By default it was weather, clock and calendar.

IN latest versions OS widgets are disabled by default, but the user can return them for themselves using special programs. We'll talk about this below.

Using Desktop Gadgets Revived

The first example is Desktop Gadgets Revived software. The program returns the standard set of gadgets that were in Windows 7. Download link: http://gadgetsrevived.com/download-sidebar/

After visiting the site, click on the link “ Download the Desktop gadgets installer»

The download file is a ZIP archive. Unpacking it and run the installer. Select the language that will be displayed during the installation process.

We follow the prompts of the installation wizard, and now select the language of the program itself. The default is “Russian”. The gadgets themselves that are available for installation are already included in the software.

Click “Next” and then “ Install" The installation process will take no more than a minute.

Now, by right-clicking on the desktop, the user will see the familiar menu item “ Gadgets».

8GadgetPack utility

The second option is the 8GadgetPack utility, which works on the same principle as the program above. It brings back the familiar widgets to Windows 8.

To download the software, you must click on the " Download" on right.

The file is an MSI format installer, meaning it requires administrator rights.

After launching the installer, click " Install" The installation process will begin immediately.

Installation will take literally one minute.

After the process is completed, the installer will offer to immediately show the utility widgets. This is evidenced by the paragraph “ Showgadgetswhensetupexits».

Right-click on the desktop and select the menu item “ Gadgets».

The window that opens will display a list of all available widgets in this utility.

Xwidget app

Another representative of utilities for setting up widgets is Xwidget.

To download, click the button on the right " Download».

The download file is a ZIP archive. After downloading it you need unpack and run installer

We specify the software installation path; by default, it places itself in the standard directory for all Windows programs.

For ease of launching the software, we agree to install a shortcut on the desktop.

The installation process will take less than a minute. Once finished, the installer will prompt you to launch Xwidget.

The program will display a message stating that to use full functionality you must activate license. For normal operation mode, select “ Continue FREE».

The advantage of Xwidget compared to other similar software is that it allows edit and make changes into gadgets at the discretion of the user. To do this, right-click on any widget and select “ Change».

Unfortunately, the software does not work correctly with the Cyrillic alphabet and some items in the menu are not displayed.

In the widget settings menu you can configure it to suit any requirements: change the color scheme, transparency, background, name that will be displayed and many other possibilities.

There is also an item in the context menu “ Gallery».

When you click it, a library of gadgets that are available for this software will open.

The user can choose absolutely any tool he needs for his workstation.

Changing the sidebar from MetroSidebar

The last option is the MetroSidebar.

To download the utility, you need to go to the “ Download».

The file is an MSI format installer - you will need administrator rights to install it.

Click " Next» and accept the terms of the license agreement.

The software offers the standard option as the installation path.

We confirm the installation by pressing the button “ Next" After the process is completed, the software will prompt you to reboot the computer, to make changes.

After rebooting, the user will have a sidebar on the right. During the first launch, the utility will provide small visual instructions for working with it.

By default, the following widgets are installed: time, weather, location and Bing search engine.

To configure any element, you need to right-click on it and select “ Settings».