Video: How to Get Widgets on Your Mac's Desktop

[MacRumors]

When MacRumors videographer Dan Barbera shares his apps and desktops during videos, he often gets questions about what he's using. Recently, he had an app that adds widgets to the Mac desktop that viewers were curious about, so he thought he'd do a dedicated video on what it is, how it works, and how to use it.

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To get widgets on his Mac, Dan is using an app called WidgetWall, which is priced at $9.99 per year (or through Setapp if you use that). WidgetWall works as soon as you download it, putting popular widgets on your desktop, but you can customize what's available, the color, the size, the location, and more.

Available widgets include clock, weather, calendar, calculator, and music, along with a widget for bringing up ChatGPT. You can even add a row of apps that you access often, show off your photos, see your Mac's performance at a glance, and use a sticky note widget.

Make sure to watch the video to see the widget in action, and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Article Link: Video: How to Get Widgets on Your Mac's Desktop

 

[Ankit1088]

Pretty cool, but I don't think I can get around the $9.99 yearly subscription.

 

[deebinem]

Pretty cool, but I don't think I can get around the $9.99 yearly subscription.

This!

Call me old school, but if you give me a one-time purchase price, I might be more inclined to buy your stuff.

 

[antiprotest]

Pretty cool, but I don't think I can get around the $9.99 yearly subscription.

Another app that deserves to be sherlocked by Apple.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Another app that deserves to be sherlocked by Apple.

Agree.
Even Widgets in the LaunchPad would do.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Another app that deserves to be sherlocked by Apple.

Don’t count on it. It took them long enough just to make the Spotlight search bar moveable…

 

[WilliApple]

WilliWidgets: *Takes Notes*

 

[BrentT]

I would rather pay once for an app than all these subscriptions. I think they count on folks forgetting to cancel.

 

[rafark]

macOS Vista

 

[alexandr]

Aw, remember back in the day when we just had widgets on our desktops natively?..

 

[meson]

Bring back Dashboard! What is old is new again!

 

[Aston441]

Aw, remember back in the day when we just had widgets on our desktops natively?..

Yeah I came here to say this.

I never used it. Don't miss it.

 

[rpmurray]

... which is priced at $9.99 per year ...

I was OK with the price until the "per year" part. Subscriptions are a hard pass.

 

[rpmurray]

I would rather pay once for an app than all these subscriptions. I think they count on folks forgetting to cancel.

Yeah, it's a scam to get reoccurring payments for little effort.

 

[rpmurray]

This!

Call me old school, but if you give me a one-time purchase price, I might be more inclined to buy your stuff.

Especially when we'd need to buy an upgrade again anyway when the next version of macOS breaks it.

 

[erikkfi]

Remember Dashboard? I used it from Leopard until Apple ruthlessly killed it in Catalina.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Wonder if this is going to drain the battery life.

 

[Jimmy Bubbles]

Remember when widgets were on your desktop? Except I wouldn’t want them statically sitting on there 24/7.

 

[alexandr]

Yeah I came here to say this.

I never used it. Don't miss it.

I used it quite a bit. Never understood why they got rid of that.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

didn't even read yet but I can bet the app is paid , and rather expensive at it

EDIT: I was right. do you guys know of any free or cheaper alternative ? hoping macOS 14 would bring widget support finally

 

[segfaultdotorg]

I remember when widgets had a dedicated function key on Apple's keyboards. Then they killed them off for no reason, and the Weather widget quit working, even on older MacOS versions which still had widgets. Now they are killing off the Lightning connector for no reason. Sad!

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Wonder if this is going to drain the battery life.

I'd bet so , especialy if they aren't static widgets. besides it'll probably have a hit on windowsServer, in the same way that putting many folders onto your desktop increases RAM and energy consumption for it

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

I used it quite a bit. Never understood why they got rid of that.

maybe at that time it was consuming too much power , since cpus werent as powerful , so they deemed good to disable to feature ?

 

[ProfessionalFan]

This kind of app should be a one time purchase, I would get it if it was

 

[Aston441]

I used it quite a bit. Never understood why they got rid of that.

Good point. Even though I didn't use it, it's weird they stripped the code out. Obviously some people liked it. Cost of leaving the code it is approximately zero. Who knows. I'm sure there were many meetings 😂