Microsoft axes Gadgets support in Windows 8, retires Windows Live Gallery

By Tom Warren, on 3rd Oct 11 9:42 am with 34 Comments

Windows 7 Gadgets

Microsoft has revealed that it will no longer support Gadgets in Windows 8.

The software maker revealed the change in a message on the company’s Windows downloads site. Microsoft is retiring its Windows Live Gallery site that typically provides access to desktop gadgets that were originally introduced with the Windows Vista operating system. Microsoft supported desktop gadgets in Windows Vista’s sidebar and removed the sidebar in Windows 7 but kept the gadgets support.

“Microsoft is no longer supporting development or uploading of new Gadgets,” said a statement on Microsoft’s Windows Live Gallery site. Microsoft revealed it is focusing support on “the much richer set of opportunities available for the newest version of Windows.” It’s not yet clear whether Microsoft will remove the Gadgets functionality in Windows 8 or whether the company will simply not support the feature and any new or existing Gadgets. The Windows Live Gallery site now points developers towards Microsoft’s Windows 8 Developer Preview:

“With Windows Developer Preview, developers can create rich app experiences where customers focus on their important tasks. Apps are at the center of the Windows Developer Preview experience and are alive with activity and vibrant content. Users immerse themselves in your full-screen app while Windows gracefully gets out of the way.”

LiveSide, who spotted the Windows Live Gallery retirement, notes that the service once hosted around 27 million page views a month back in 2007.

Image Credit: redmondpie.com

  • Zangai

    Finally! I dont think anyone used them anyway. Poor implementation, and too resource-intensive.

    • Chris

      Finnaly? Were they that much of a problem to you?

    • phil jay

      They’d be cool if the rendering engine of those html widgets was like ie10, right now all of them are ugly and their code is much more ugly. I’m still using some like the outlook one and the resource monitor.. though I redesigned them to look a little more metro like…

    • Anonymous

      True, they were all crappy and fugly. Obviously one of the most unused features of Vista/7.

    • inreasonsimage

      I use them all the time and I wish Microsoft had added more of them to Windows 7. Windows 7 comes with 9 gadgets compared to OS X which comes with dozens of widgets. The gadgets for download on Microsoft’s website are sub-par.  I don’t understand why Microsoft didn’t gradually create more gadgets and add them with Windows Update.  It’s these little things that regular users like and they notice when they aren’t there. The themes for Windows 7 that are available for download on Microsoft’s site are wonderful and I check once a week to see if more have been added. Even though I like the themes available on Microsoft’s site, I believe Microsoft is not fully utilizing themes. They should have hundreds or thousands more themes.

    • Acftootsie12

      I was thinking the same thing. I didn’t know anyone used these. I just found they slowed down my boot up or just froze all together so I stopped using them.

    • http://www.riministreet.com Louis Patterson

      I didn’t use them, but they didn’t bother me.  The fact that the implementation of Gadgets was shoddy didn’t really mean I had a problem with them.  Indeed, I think they point to exciting possibilities for desktop versatility.

      Hmm…maybe “exciting” is overdoing it a little.

  • Chris

    Gadgets could be useful. Hell Microsoft could have kept them and add a gadget store to the new windows store. Have it so people can have in app purchues dir gadgets etc.

    • Anonymous

      The live tiles are a lot like gadgets. They provide live information. So, the developer just needs to create a tile that provides the information they want and it will have the same functionality.

    • http://twitter.com/oolong2 oolong2

      As far as I’m concerned Metro Apps and Live Tiles are just Gadgets 2.0

    • Anonymous

      Yes, but they are integrated into the os. Therefore, it uses less resources than gadgets. It is also a launcher for apps. You can have icons and gatdgets to show info, or you can combine them into one tile.

    • Someone

      Problem is, the live tile is not on the desktop, so you can’t glance over to the weather while your working on something, you have to navigate to another screen.

  • GP007

    I use two gadgets right now on my desktop, one is a clock and the other is just the date/calendar.   Well, those aren’t needed now since Win8 will show you that info anytime you hover over the start button with your mouse.

    • http://twitter.com/oolong2 oolong2

      Well technically Windows 7 shows you the date and time to in the bottom right.  Plus all you need to do is click/touch it to get an expanded calendar & clock.

      Not much different than Windows 8, just not as nice.

    • Beachcomber

      Yes you can expand to a calendar but cannot do anything with it. You cannot add an appointment or a birthday to it, so its somewhat a waste of time. 
      With a Calendar gadget I have on my desktop it allows me to do just that. Better yet those appointment show up in Thunderbird’s mail add-on.

  • Eyesore

    First thing I did on a clean install of Vista was disable the sidebar. I think with the implementation of Live Tiles, most of the info that gadgets displayed will be available on the new Start Screen so this isn’t all that surprising.

    • Gornot

      It’s true that most of the features used in these gadgets can be replaced with live tiles in the MetroUI, but just the act of having to switch to the new Start Screen to check something out instead of simply looking at the right hand side of my desktop isn’t very appealing to me.

      Besides, if a simple Weather gadget takes 50 megs of RAM, I wonder how much will system analysis apps like GPU temperature, Network meter and similar stuff take, which needs to be refreshed every second. I can’t really imagine it just yet. I do hope I will be proven wrong, though.

    • http://twitter.com/laserfloyd Lewis McCrary

      Surely people that need that sort of real time info won’t be alienated by Win8.  It remains to be seen.  I’ve love a tile that could show real time stats though be it system, weather, stocks or sports scores.

    • Eyesore

      In the current Dev Review of Win8, the windows key is the shortcut to toggle back & forth between the Start screen and the current running app so at least they’re making it easy to get to the live tiles (on a standard mouse/keyboard setup).

      Granted for those people like yourself who use gadgets this will be a major loss but I think the Dev community will step in fill the void and there’ll be a slew of apps/live tiles to replicate alot of the funtionality of some of the more widely used gadgets… probably!

  • http://thommck.wordpress.com Thom McKiernan

    With Windows XP I used to use a 3rd party sidebar app to get gadgets and it was really handy.
    I got quite excited (yes I’m that sad) to see the support for gadgets in Vista but disappointed at how much space they took up when docked. You had to have different “pages” in a sidebar to fit them all on & that kind of defeated the object!
    IMHO they were also quite difficult to make properly, used too many resources and the Gallery site was super-fugly.

    Now Microsoft are moving away from the desktop I’m not surprised gadgets are getting dumped in the recycle bin. Most people only used 3-4 gadgets on screen at most and in Windows 8 you get a similar, but more enhanced, affect with the Live Tiles in the Start Menu.

  • Gornot

    I loved gadgets, and still use them regularly. They just sit on my desktop and display all information I need to see at any time, whenever I want to. It is sad to see the Gadget Platform retiring. And, unfortunately, there’s another reason I may not upgrade to 8

  • Timothy Neinherz

    NOOOO, Gadgets are my favourites! Why is it being ditched away?

    Hope they would comsensate with much much better stuffs… No, no, desktop, not metro titles.

  • Tim

    Makes sense as what they do can be incorporated into a live tile on the new start menu. I like the idea of gadgets but the fact you had to view the desktop to see them rather than hit a button (like you do in OS X) makes them less useful

    • Anonymous

      Win Key+G and they will appear on top of everything

  • http://twitter.com/Fire_Six Sriram Sarma

    Isnt Live Tiles in Win8 good enough? It can do all that Gadgets do and I am sure its a lot faster than them!

  • ArtantRoby

    Gadgets are useful, meh, a “gadget desktop” like MacOSx is a pain in the ass.
    If I wanna a gadget, it should be in the desktop not in another windows/screens/etc…

  • notePAD

    Gadgets are useless, IMHO. Never used it, I swear…lol!

  • Anonymous

    Gadgets can be useful.  I use the Pandora gadget every day.  There is also a weather gadget on my desktop. Now, if Windows Phone apps could replace apps, I would be very happy about the switch!!

  • http://doctorwhofan98.wordpress.com/ doctorwhofan98

    That’s a shame…

  • Anonymous

    I actually liked Gadgets.  I used them on my second monitor so that while playing a game on my primary monitor, I could still see stuff like clock, CPU usage, ect…  But I can understand why MS is dropping them, especially if it will save on some resources.

    What I hope is that you can have dual monitors with your primary one playing a game full screen, while the secondary one can still show the metro live tiles and even let you use touch to move it around while keeping primary display full screen.

  • http://www.Nave360.com Sebastian Gorgon

    I actually have a few gadgets i can’t live without like CPU monitor (not the stock one) so can see which of my i7 cores are being used and so on… I hope someone will hack or mod windows to support it.

  • Guest

    Gadgets still run in Windows 8 (for now at least).  All that is gone is the official Windows Live site for sharing/downloading them.  Hopefully someone will step in and host such a mechanism.  I do think Microsoft should have communicated this better and given publishers of Gadgets an opportunity to get them hosted somewhere else.

    Some gadgets are fine and I really don’t want to “immerse myself in the full app screen” just to do a simple unit conversion!  Sadly, this doesn’t sit well with the Windows 8 ethos so I guess we may find Gadgets removed completely from Windows 8 in order to avoid any confusion with Metro apps.  Shame.

  • holden321

    metro apps are for laptops, but what will be for desktop computers…

  • Leec57

    Windows 8 is
    not yet here and Microsoft is abandoning support of components of Windows 7
    already. Microsoft seems in the last few years to just flounder from one failed
    project to another. Of course this is just a continuation of their failure with
    Active Desktop.  

    As a regular
    user of gadgets I find it really annoying that they just drop a useful feature
    in the middle of the product lifecycle. Although I am a Microsoft professional
    I find myself defecting to Apple a bit more every day.