XWidget

The free application XWidget provides a nice selection of widgets you could use on your desktop and thus enhance its looks. The application comes with a built-in selection of widgets and there are several other widgets you can download from the web.

You will find the XWidget installation file in a 6.9MB archive that should not take long to download. Extract the executable inside the archive and run it; a setup wizard will then help you get XWidget up and running on your Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8-powered machine. If you do not like to have your homepage changed and if you don’t like toolbars, pay attention during the installation. The setup wizard will ask to change your homepage to XWidget and will ask to install the Babylon Toolbar.

When you run XWidget for the first time, the application will launch a few widgets just to get you started: a weather widget, a photo album widget, and a clock widget. You can drag and drop the widgets to anywhere you want on the screen, and if you right click them, you can play with a few settings.

To start more widgets, you need only double click the XWidget system tray icon. A dashboard that displays your installed widgets will show up when you do so (you can customize what widgets are displayed on the dashboard, and you can easily search for installed widgets). Click on a widget in the bar and it will be launched. Alternatively, you can launch more widgets from the Manage Widgets menu.

XWidget comes with a nice selection of built-in widgets. If these are not enough, you can always get more from the web, either from the developer’s website, or from within the XWidget application, by right clicking the system tray icon and selecting the More Widgets option (or by right clicking a widget and selecting the Gallery option). And if that still isn’t enough, you can create your own widgets.

To help you focus on the good looks of the widgets, XWidget comes with a very handy feature: double click the desktop and all desktop shortcuts will be hidden out of sight, or set it so desktop icons are automatically hidden away when XWidget starts.

As mentioned above, XWidget is free. You can use the application for as long as you want without having to part with your money.

XWidget puts a nice collection of good looking and useful widgets at your disposal. You are very well advised to try this free desktop customization platform.