Modern desktop gadgets made their debut with Windows Vista, and Windows 7, which is still an operating system loved by users worldwide. Desktop gadgets were kinda replaced with live tiles on Windows 8, which behaved similarly to the way desktop gadgets did, but with noticeable improvements. Now gadgets made their comeback through widgets on Windows 11, and they are more useful and fluid than desktop gadgets or live tiles used to be, in around the last decade. 

Windows 11 comes with most of the gadgets pre-installed in the widgets bar, like weather, sports, stocks, etc., but that is not just it. You can always tweak the list of widgets in the widgets bar, or you can even download new widgets to make your PC more useful, get information in a jiffy or get your job done easily with fewer clicks.

So, without any further delay, let’s get started with how to download and add new widgets to Windows 11 widgets bar.

Download and then add new widgets to Windows 11

• Get started by clicking on the widgets area, which should ideally be located on the bottom-left corner of your computer, on the extreme left of the start button.

• On the extreme left column, you should find the widgets, with your Microsoft feed on the right. Simply click on the ‘+’ button.

• Here, you can find the list of widgets that came pre-installed with Windows 11 and a few from the apps that you have downloaded from the Microsoft Store. Some popular widgets, as you can find in the screenshot below are the Family Safety widget, Game Pass, Phone Link, Photos, To Do, Weather, and many others. To get new widgets, click on ‘Find more widgets’.

• The Microsoft Store will instantly open up, and hence you will land on the page, where you can download widgets or those apps that support widgets on your Windows 11 computer.

While most of the widgets are totally free to download, there are some paid widgets too.

Just tap on the preferred widget, and download the widget, just like you download any app from the Microsoft Store.

Don’t blame me for such a small library of widgets on the Microsoft Store, as I am pretty sure more is yet to come.

Don’t expect that a simple widget will work just like a regular and full-fledged Microsoft Store app. It is up to the developers when it comes to how much of the power is packed within these widgets, and how they actually behave in your everyday working environment on your Windows 11 PC.

Say, for example, the Spotify app, and the Spotify widget from the Microsoft Store act like two separate apps. You can’t play or pause music, or change tracks in the Spotify app from the widgets, nor there are full tracks in the widget.

I haven’t tried all the widgets individually, but the widgets still need improvement, to say the least.

This tutorial was just about how to download and add new widgets to Windows 11 so that you can discover some really useful widgets when the Store offers more mature ones.

So, that’s all about how to add new widgets to Windows 11. Do you have any questions? Feel free to comment on the same below.