I’m curious to know if you use widgets on your Mac desktop. I ask because I prefer a very clean desktop, but I might be missing out on a useful feature by not using desktop widgets.
What is your practice and why? If you have widgets on your desktop, which ones?
I do.
I’m not gonna share a screenshot due to the information held in those widgets, all widgets are medium (i.e. 1 deep x 2 wide) unless otherwise stated
but on my MBA:
Bottom left
Top right
Bottom right
My primary Mac is an M3 MacBook Pro connected to a 27" 4K display (hopefully to be replaced by the next generation of Apple Studio Display in 2026 
).
When I’m using an external display (which is 99% of the time), I find it very helpful to have a few widgets on my secondary MacBook Pro display. Most notably, the Fantastical calendar widget (showing the current month and the next few appointments) and two OmniFocus perspectives (On Deck and Today: Later).
Having a glanceable view of my calendar and tasks for today helps keep me focused and intentional.
On my second monitor of my work computer, I’ve got an empty corner where I put a few task perspective widgets, calendar and blood sugar. I’d like to add Basecamp activity if I can figure out how (they only have schedule widgets.)
The task perspectives took the most finessing. I only show items I might have forgotten about, not core daily work or lists of nice-to-haves/potentials. They’re empty much of the time.
I didn’t like desktop widgets until I could make them transparent, and I don’t put them behind other apps because I’m not used to toggling to show the desktop.
I used to use them (I used to write them, back in the day) but I find them hard to read on Tahoe (this is mostly me, nort Tahoe).
I use them, but the way I use my Mac, they’re a bit pointless because I can’t ever see them. I have my screen arranged in Spaces, with each Space having two apps in my typical workflow, filling the whole screen, hiding the widgets. I don’t ever think to minimize/hide to get to the widgets.
I use them mainly for news, weather, and stock market. Long time user as I started (on the Mac ) when they introduced Dashboard back in 2005. I used a similar third party feature in Windows even earlier than that, I think it may have been Konfabulator. And I was a heavy user of Borland Sidekick for MS/DOS in the 1980s that could be viewed as a precursor. Frankly it’s not as prominent in my life as it used to be.
No widgets
My screen is always covered with the documents I am working on.
I do have some of them but honestly I never see them, all my windows run fully maximized. Perhaps people with better eyesight will have a different opinion but for me seeing the desktop means I’m wasting useful screen real state! 
I use widgets, but not on my desktop; only in Notification Center:
Just pure Black Screen.
I have a lot of love for Konbulator! It was doing so good until it was purchased later (was it by Yahoo!) and it all went downhill after that.
Back on topics, I had 2 monitors and the other ones are filled with a few widgets - big clock and calendar to glance the time and today’s date. A DisplayBuddy widget to quickly switch the brightness of monitors - Dim, Reading, Movie through a click of icon. A Large Silicio Spotify album art showing songs now playing. A few stocks widgets to keep track of my portfolio. I keep these widgets full color… they are really nice.
Yes, both on the desktop and in notification centre. On the desktop I’ve got 2 Photos widgets (one large and one medium so they show different pictures), fantastical, weather, Parcel, and one or two that cycle in and out, like Mona for peeking at my Mastodon feed. I was initially deeply disturbed by Sequoia adding the gap around windows with the tiling features, but I was won over by the desktop peek feature because I would almost never see my desktop otherwise…
For notification centre I’ve got another Photos widget (quelle suprise), Shortcuts, Home, and batteries.
I have not used them before I upgraded to Tahoe’s latest stable version. I never really found a need for them, but it only added a calendar and weather widget to the screen. I don’t mind either of them, and hardly notice them until I’ve went looking for them. Beyond that, I’ve not used one before.
On my work laptop I have two clocks, one for each timezone the team is. They’re centered at the top, so it’s easy to look at.
This looks great. I wrote my own slightly more minimal app that I call Since. I use it for ages/birthdays, countdowns to forthcoming gigs (can pick a calendar event) and moon phase! iOS-only.
No widgets for me on macOS. I hardly ever see my desktop. I’m more of a menu bar extra guy: weather (iStat Menus), statuses (xbar), calendar events (Dato) all live up there.
I have a lot of widgets arrayed on the Desktop on my MBP. Weather for the current location, weather for some international locations I travel to frequently. Clocks for my key locales. Find My. Reminders. Calendar. And several other.
I never use Desktop for documents, and I always open apps “fill screen”, and just let them stack on top of each other.
I have the lower left hot corner defined to show Desktop. Whenever I want to see the widget array, I slew the mouse pointer down to that corner, sliding away the app windows until I dismiss the Desktop.
This works out well for me.
Katie
