The state of Windows widgets in 2026
You hit Win+W and a panel slides out. Weather, stocks, news. You close it, and it's gone. That's the Windows 11 Widgets Board in 2026.
Microsoft recently gave it a facelift: a Copilot Discover feed, a dedicated widgets tab, and per-widget resizing (small, medium, large). It's better than it was. But it's still a side panel on your primary monitor. No desktop pinning. No second screen. No third-party widgets. Close the panel, everything disappears.
For a lot of people, that's not enough. Here's what else exists.
The built-in option: Windows 11 Widgets Board
Worth starting here because most people don't realize what it can and can't do.
What it does well: fast to open (Win+W), clean design, integrates with Microsoft services (Outlook calendar, To Do, OneDrive photos). The 2026 redesign added per-widget resizing and a quieter layout with less news clutter. It's rolling out gradually, so not everyone has it yet. If all you want is a weather tile and a calendar glance, it works without installing anything.
Where it stops: no desktop pinning, no second monitor support, no fullscreen mode, no third-party widget ecosystem worth mentioning, and no persistence. Close the panel, everything goes away. Microsoft proved that widgets matter on desktop. They just built it as a side feature instead of a real tool.
Widget Launcher
The simplest third-party option. Widget Launcher puts individual widgets directly on your desktop: clock, weather, CPU meter, calendar, sticky notes, battery. They sit on top of your wallpaper and stay there.
It's available on the Microsoft Store, free with a paid upgrade for more widgets. Setup takes about two minutes.
The tradeoff is depth. Each widget is standalone. There's no unified dashboard, no layout editor, no multi-page system. You're placing individual tiles on your desktop, which works for 3-4 widgets but starts looking cluttered past that. And there's no second monitor awareness. Everything lives on your primary display.
Good for someone who wants two or three extra info tiles without any complexity. Not built for a full dashboard setup.
Rainmeter
Rainmeter has been the answer to "how do I customize my Windows desktop" since 2001. It's free, open source, and the community has built thousands of skins covering everything from system monitoring to music visualizers to full desktop overhauls.
The April 2026 trending skins lean heavily into glassmorphism, gaming aesthetics (Skyrim suites, sci-fi HUDs), and complete system monitoring panels. Sites like Beebom, RankRed, and DeviantArt publish fresh roundups regularly.
The real question with Rainmeter is whether you enjoy the process. Every skin uses INI config files. Getting widgets positioned correctly, matching fonts and colors across skins from different authors, and troubleshooting layout issues on your specific resolution is part of the experience. Some people love it. Most people try it for an afternoon and give up.
The latest stable release (v4.5.23) is from April 2025. The codebase still gets commits, but the software hasn't shipped a major update in nearly a year.
If you're comfortable editing config files and want maximum control over every pixel, Rainmeter is still unmatched. If you want something that works out of the box, keep reading.
Seelen UI
Seelen UI is the fastest-growing desktop customization tool on Windows right now. Over 16,000 GitHub stars, regular releases, and XDA and AlternativeTo both rank it as the top Rainmeter alternative.
But calling it a Rainmeter alternative is slightly misleading. Seelen UI is a shell replacement. It gives you a custom dock, a tiling window manager, a top status bar, and an app launcher. It makes Windows look and feel more like macOS. The latest version (v2.5.7, March 2026) added multi-window dock splitting and configurable polling intervals for CPU/RAM/network monitoring in the toolbar.
What it doesn't do is put a widget dashboard on your screen. There's no drag-and-drop layout editor, no multi-page system, no second monitor mode. v2 is supposed to add a dedicated widget system, which would change the picture, but it hasn't shipped yet.
Seelen UI is worth installing if you want to overhaul how your entire desktop works. If you specifically want widgets and info panels, it's not the right tool today.
YASB (Yet Another Status Bar)
YASB is a status bar for the top of your screen. Think of it as a single horizontal strip showing system stats, time, notifications, and shortcuts. The latest version (v1.9.1) added GitHub notifications, SSH indicators, Windows Terminal and WSL providers, and click-to-expand detail popups for CPU, memory, and GPU.
It's open source, 4,600+ GitHub stars, and supports around 47 widget modules. Configuration is done through YAML and CSS files.
YASB is sharp and well-maintained, but it's specifically a status bar. One line at the top of one screen. No full-screen dashboards, no pages, no drag-and-drop. If you want dense info in a thin strip, it does that very well.
GadgetPack
GadgetPack brings back the Windows 7 desktop gadgets. Clock, CPU meter, weather, calendar, sticky notes, network monitor. They float on your desktop exactly like they did 15 years ago.
It still works on Windows 11. The aesthetic hasn't changed. If you have nostalgia for the Windows 7 sidebar and just want a clock and CPU meter on your desktop, GadgetPack gets the job done in under a minute.
The project is still actively maintained (v41.0 shipped March 2026), but the widgets themselves haven't evolved much visually. They look like Windows 7 gadgets because they are Windows 7 gadgets. Customization is minimal. It's a nostalgia play more than a growing platform.
Monitor Flows: a dedicated dashboard app
This is what we're building. Monitor Flows is a desktop app that takes over a dedicated screen and turns it into a full dashboard. 50+ widgets, drag-and-drop layout, up to 9 pages, community skins, 3 levels of visual customization.
The difference from the tools above is scope. This isn't a panel that slides out, a status bar, or a shell replacement. It's a fullscreen dashboard designed to run on a secondary display: an ultrawide, a bar screen like the Corsair Xeneon Edge, a vertical monitor, or just a regular second screen you have sitting there.
Widgets include the basics (clock, weather, calendar, CPU/GPU, media player) but also things you won't find elsewhere: a live flight map, internet radio with DVR time-shift, Philips Hue and WLED controls, Home Assistant integration, a 3D globe, Sonos playback, and a built-in terminal. No config files, no scripting. You drag widgets where you want them.
We're Martin and Baptiste. Martin has 37 years of desktop software development behind him. The app runs on Windows through Electron, supports 6 languages, and is heading into a test phase soon with a public launch planned for summer 2026.
Not released yet. [Join the waitlist](/waitlist)
So which one?
It depends on what you're actually trying to do.
Here's a quick overview of how they compare: the Widgets Board has no desktop pinning, no second monitor, and about 8 widgets. Widget Launcher and GadgetPack pin widgets to your desktop but max out at around 10-15 widgets with no second monitor support. Rainmeter has unlimited community widgets and works on a second monitor with manual positioning, but requires INI config files. Seelen UI has no second monitor dashboard mode and no drag-and-drop, though it has no config files either. YASB is a single-line status bar with 47 modules and YAML configuration. Monitor Flows has full second monitor support, drag-and-drop, 50+ built-in widgets, multi-page layouts, and no config files.
The Widgets Board is fine for a quick weather glance. Widget Launcher and GadgetPack work if you just want a few tiles floating on your desktop without thinking about it too much.
Rainmeter is still the deepest toolkit available, but you're committing to config files and troubleshooting. Seelen UI is where the energy is right now if you want to rethink how your whole desktop works. YASB is clean and sharp if a status bar is all you need.
And then there's the second monitor question. Most of the tools above are built for your primary display. They don't think about the screen next to it. If you've got a monitor that's just sitting there showing a wallpaper, that's the problem we built Monitor Flows to solve.