As we mentioned before, these elements were quite important and popular in older versions of Windows. However, there came a time when Microsoft itself decided to stop implementing them, although that did not mean that they would disappear forever. What happens is that now we have to install them ourselves by hand, instead of having them by default in the system. This is precisely what we are going to show you next with the case of 8GadgetPack.
But, first of all, what we must know is that, in certain circumstances, these elements that we include in the desk of the system, it will be very useful for us. And it is that, just by installing them, we will have at our disposal and always in view a good amount of additional information of interest. So we can see first-hand the time of the zone, the use of CPU and memory RAM, writing your own notes, having a clock, a radio tuner, a countdown, a timer, etc. All this in addition with customizable designs that do not clash at all.
Arriving at this, it is interesting to know that one of the main reasons why Microsoft stopped using these elements in previous versions of the system was security. And it is that the old Windows that we installed on our computer did not have the functions and applications related to this matter, as it happens in the most current versions of the operating system. In addition, these Gadgets, whether their own or from third parties, have improved significantly and are no longer as prone to attacks that could harm our computer.
For example, this is precisely why Microsoft itself has made the decision to bring them back to life in Windows 11 by default. In this way, the requests and needs of many users who have been missing these software elements on their computers for years are covered. At the same time we must know that this solution that we offer you now is free of all kinds of malicious codes and we can install and use them on our computer without any problem.
Therefore, below, we will see how to get the most out of this program and thus be able to use the widgets that most interest us in each case.
Up to 45 independent gadgets with 8GadgetPack
If you are one of those users who regularly used Windows 7 gadgets and currently miss their usefulness in Windows 10, know that you can enjoy them again. For this, you have the 8GadgetPack gadget pack that we are going to talk about in more depth below.
To give you an idea, it is a complete pack of 45 different widgets, originally created for Windows 8 but which is also perfectly compatible with Windows 10 and 11. It includes some that were once developed by Microsoft itself, such as the famous analog clock or the CPU meter. We will even have the sidebar that we can configure to always have our favorite gadgets visible and close at hand.
As you can imagine here we have the possibility of add or remove widgets that we are really going to use or that we do not need at all. With everything and with this we must take into account that the disk space occupied by these elements is not much. This means that we can add them to the operating system without fear of running out of space in a day, at least because of these additional elements.
Based on the fact that its theme is very varied, the possibilities that this set of additions opens up for us are very wide.
Download and install to have the gadgets again
To download this complete package of widgets we have to access its . Here on the right side of the screen we must click on the Download v31.0 button, which is the latest version available. It has a weight of 27MB and it dates from 10-18-2019, so we can already see that it will barely consume space on our PC hard drive, as we mentioned before.
Once the executable is downloaded we will proceed to its installation. When we run it, the classic sidebar will appear where we can add the different gadgets, being able to drag them to the desktop simply by double-clicking on them or dragging them to the desktop. If we click on the icon of the Wrench We can open the options menu from which we can access their settings, where we can edit them, change their size, reset or disable them, among other interesting functions.
If we click on the plus symbol (+) located at the top right of the bar, a new menu will open where we can see all available gadgets. We can add them to the bar with just a double click on each one or we can insert them to the desktop, simply by dragging and placing them in the place we choose. To eliminate them, it is as easy as clicking on the X (x) that appears on the right side. From this menu we can also obtain in some cases a brief description of them if we click on the “Show details” button.
The sidebar also offers some customization options and we can even close it if we don’t like it. To do this, double-click the right button and we can close the bar or also access a menu of options. From here we can place the bar on the left or right side of the screen or keep it always visible to always have the gadgets in sight.
Different types of gadgets available in 8GadgetPack
In the 8GadgetPack pack we find up to 45 gadgets. Of all of them we can highlight some such as:
- Clock: the classic analog clock. It has 8 different spheres so that we can choose the ones we like the most, as well as configure the time zone of any place in the world.
- countdown: gives us the possibility of establishing a date of an event and carrying out a countdown from that date.
- DriveInfo: This gadget is in charge of showing us information about the storage unit that we select. It will show us both the total disk space and the percentage occupied.
- Desktop Calculator: it is a calculator that we can always have at hand both at the bar and on the desk, with which we can carry out basic operations. It can be configured with different colors.
- iBattery: It is an icon of a battery that will be in charge of showing us the state of its capacity in a clear and visible way. It also shows your capacity in percentage. Very useful if we have a laptop.
- MiniRadio: With this gadget we can tune in over the Internet with a wide selection of online radios. We can edit its interface with different designs and colors.
- my weather: the typical weather application where we can choose our city and it will show us if it is sunny or rainy, as well as the maximum and minimum temperature. It has some basic configurations the type of icon or colors.
- Sticky Notes: It is the typical note gadget that we can always have on hand on our desk for when we need to take a quick note. We can configure the color, font and font size.
- Turn off PC: This is a useful shortcut to be able to turn off, restart or suspend our computer after the period of time that we select.
- And many more!
Two Widgets to know the weather in your area
Perhaps one of the most common uses that are made of this type of element is to know the weather hour weather in our area.
Next, we will see some of the best widget for windows that will allow us to keep an eye on the weather in our area at all times, as well as its forecast.
Main Weather
This is a gadget of this type that offers us a unique interface and a configuration menu that allows us to customize its appearance and operation. So we can change the display aspect of the displayed data, the font color, the type of icons, or the background color. As it could not be otherwise, we will have to specify the zone or region with which we want to deal, and the temperature can be seen in Celsius or Fahrenheit.
To finish, we will tell you what shows the wind speed and direction in kilometers or miles per hour. In addition, to make use of this element, you will only have to execute the file of the compressed file that we downloaded. Then the widget will be executed as such, as long as we have previously installed the 8GadgetPack app. We can get hold of this gadget.
AccuWeather
Perhaps this is one of the most popular proposals of this type, since it has been with us for a good number of years. Thus, we find a very pleasant user interface that is easy to understand where, as usual, we find several customizable options. Therefore, we will have to specify the city in which we are, as well as the unit in which the data will be displayed.
It must be said that it also offers us direct access to the official website of the app in order to be able to maximize all the weather information that we can access. This is an element that we can download.
Alternatives to 8GadgetPack
If we want to bring gadgets back to the Windows 10 desktop, we suggest some alternatives to 8GadgetPack that we should take into consideration:
Windows Desktop Gadgets
If we want an alternative to the 8GadgetPack gadget pack, we can opt for Windows Desktop Gadget. Both the interface and the gadgets are available in Spanish, so it will be very easy to use. Once downloaded we can start adding all the gadgets it offers us to our desktop just by dragging or double-clicking on them. All the available widgets will be shown in the Windows management window from where we can install them on our computer. It has widgets such as the calendar, clock, notes, Google Translate or monitoring the CPU and temperature, among others. We can download it from
rainmeter
It is possibly the most popular, open source and free Windows customization tool. It is characterized by having a wide variety of skins, with which we can introduce all kinds of elements on our desktop, as well as choose where we want to place it. We can also change the appearance of these skins and all with a very low memory consumption. Among the type of content that we can add are notes, tasks, weather stations, performance meters, media players, etc. We can download Rainmeter from its .
Gadgets Revived, includes original Microsoft gadgets
This application will allow us to reinstall gadgets on the desktop of our Windows 10 computer, respecting the appearance and operation of the Microsoft operating system at all times. It has a wide variety of elements that we can add to our desktop to customize it to the maximum. It has a calendar, weather applications, unit converter, clock, CPU meter, etc. We can do all this in a simple way, without the need to carry out complex operations…
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