XWidgets is a feature rich application which provides Android and Mac OS X style gadgets for Windows. All gadgets are displayed in a Mac style Dashboard and can be dragged onto your desktop. The gadget collection can be accessed from a gallery which contains numerous categories of widgets. These include, HTC style weather and forecast gadgets, MIUI style clock, search bars, photo frames, application launchers and much more. The gadgets are highly customizable and you can even create your own widgets using available options.
After installation, you can drag and drop gadgets from the dock, to your Windows desktop. The Dock is not permanent and can be closed after you have selected desired gadgets.
You can add widgets, open widget gallery, create a custom widget, view the Dashboard, mange themes/widgets, configure options and restart or exit XWidgets from the system tray menu.
The gallery displays a list of widgets according to category (see left side menu) and allows you to download and install them. For example, you can go to the Weather category and select a weather widget to install it.
Once you have selected a gadgets from the gallery, double click on it to open its product page. This page will provide you with an overview of the gadget’s functionality, user reviews and a download option. Scroll down to the bottom of the gadget page and click download to install it.
The downloaded gadgets work like any common gadget and can be dragged anywhere on the desktop. Installed gadgets can be closed by right clicking on them and selecting “Close”. You can bring back an installed gadget anytime, by launching it from the Dashboard via drag and drop.
The Manage Widgets option (accessible from the system tray menu), allows you to manage and customize installed gadgets.
XWidgets is indeed a promising application, which seems to be quite stable even in its early development stage. It is possible that XWidget may become a viable alternative to applications like Rainmeter. As development on this project progresses further, it is likely to become one of the premium one stop gadget packs for the Windows desktop.
Note: XWidget requires being active in the system tray for the gadgets to appear on your desktop. This means that you can add or remove all widgets anytime, by launching or exiting XWidgets from system tray menu. XWidgets works works with the following Windows operating systems.
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- Windows 8
