Microsoft To Welcome Third Party Widgets In Windows 11

Microsoft announced that third party widgets will be enabled in Windows 11 beginning “later this year.” Widgets are a handy way to present bite-sized bits of information without hogging screen real estate. They’re easy to summon and dismiss, letting you quickly check some news or other real-time information and get back to your main task(s).

At present, Microsoft is the sole provider and publisher of Windows 11 widgets. This obviously limits the scope of the offerings, but there are still some useful widgets designed to show snippets of news, to do lists, weather, traffic, your Outlook calendar, and stock prices. However, most if not all of the existing widgets won’t work if you use a local account to sign into Windows 11, rather than a Microsoft account. ■