macOS Sonoma Desktop Widgets Preview

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at how in Sonoma you'll be able to put widgets on your Desktop. 

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So when macOS Sonoma comes out in the Fall there will be a whole new function for the Desktop and that's to actually display information. You can do this using the same widgets that we have been using for a few years now. But instead of them just being in Notifications Center they can be there or just sitting on your Desktop. So let me show you how it works. 

Here we are in Sonoma and this is just a beta so things may change before it's all done. But if we click on the clock at the upper right corner we see widgets here. If I had any notifications they would be at the top. I could switch out which widgets are here. Customize them and all of that. That hasn't changed. But now if you go to Edit Widgets you can add a new widget by dragging it over here and you can see I can do that with the clock widget here. But I could also just drag it onto the Desktop. So I can drop this clock widget on the Desktop. Now let's take a look at how this will appear. When I'm not using the Notification Center at all this is still there. It's actually just sitting on the Desktop. If I were to have, say, a Finder window open you see how it kind of fades back a little bit. So it doesn't appear as some sort of other window. It's definitely part of the Desktop. You can see the Desktop colors  kind of showing through. In addition, if I were to, say, have a file on the Desktop, like this, the files are still there. Actually if you drag this one around, see I could still put it wherever I want on the Desktop. But if I try to put it where a widget is, it is not going to let me. I can put it right next to it but it will kind of keep that space clear so I can see what's going on with that widget. 

So in this case I just get that simple clock there. I can tell the time even if I've got a window up here like this. I can still tell the time there. It is something I can click on. If I click on this it will actually launch the Clock App which is associated with this widget. 

So let's look at what else we can do. Instead of using Notification Center to bring up the Edit Widget's control at the bottom, I'm going to Control Click, two-finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse, on the Desktop and choose Edit Widgets. This brings it up without invoking the Notification Center here on the right. So now I'm free to deal with what's here. So let's add something else. Let's add a Photo Widget. Now I can use the suggested widgets here or scroll through them, but I could also scroll through by app. Let's go to Photos here. Instead of choosing a featured one let's choose an Album, and I'll click the Plus button there. Then I'll just dismiss the whole Edit Widgets thing there. Now I can Control click it and you could see I can change its size. I can also go to Edit Photos there and now it lets me choose the album. In this case it is the only parameter for this. It's just choosing now. So I'll choose and I've got an album here. That's Test 1. That's just the name of the album and it actually just has one photo in it. So the idea here is there is just a photo I want to be on my Desktop and since it is an album with one photo it is always just going to how this. If I do bring up another window it fades it to the back and into the wallpaper there but I can still see it. Anytime I select the Desktop itself you could see it moves everything else away and now I just get the photo at full opacity. So it is blocking out what's behind the window when I see the photo like I regularly would. 

Now there are lots of useful widgets that you can add. So let's go and try to add a few. A Calendar widget may be useful. I'll select Calendar here on the left. Here is the monthly calendar. Let me add that. Let's look through some other things. Let's go to Contacts. I can add this Contacts one. It is a group of four. So let's add that as well. Let's go and look at, say, the Weather and let's add one for that. That can be useful also. But you saw there are a whole bunch of different things. 

Now once I'm here on the Desktop all we need to do to move these around is actually Click and Drag them. You can see when they fit next to existing widgets there's kind of this outline there and I can drop it in. But I could also just move it to wherever I want. So I'll just move this down here to the bottom. I'll put this Calendar one here at the top right. If I try to put it past the corner it kind of snaps into place there so making it really easy to have these look nice and organized. Let's move the Weather here like that and I'll keep the photo right there. So this is a nice grouping. If I click on any of these it's going to do the logical thing. Like, for instance, clicking on the Weather one will open up the Weather App. If I click on the Calendar it will open up the Calendar App. The Contacts widget, if I click on a contact it will actually open up a little window without opening the Contacts App and this window gives me information about that contact and I can click on things. Like I can click on the phone number to make a phone call. I click here to start a message or click here to do a FaceTime call or here to send an email. So there's more than just the functionality of just jumping right to an app in some cases. 

Keep in mind this whole time I still can have widgets here in Notification Center. So it doesn't replace Notification Center widgets, it is in addition to them. So I can have them on the Desktop or I can have them in Notification Center widgets or I can have them in both places if I like. They are easy to move around. They are easy to Edit. They are easy to add. So you don't have to feel like you need to come up with a perfect arrangement right away. You can just put some things there and if they seem useful then you can continue to use them. If they don't after awhile you can remove them and try some others. 

Also, of course, third party apps can have widgets. They already have them for Notification Center and those will now work here on the Desktop. In addition Apple has mentioned that in the final versions of macOS Sonoma and iOS 17 if you have a widget on your iPhone and it is for an app that is not available on the Mac you'll be able to actually see that widget on your Mac's Desktop as well. I assume your iPhone needs to be nearby which normally it would be for that widget to then be kind of projected onto your Mac's Desktop. 

Now there are some System Settings for this as well. So let's go into System Settings and then to Desktop & Dock. If we look under Desktop there is Show Widgets. So you can just turn widgets Off. So this is handy if, say, you set some up and you want to turn them off temporarily and then turn them back on again without having to get rid of them and then remember which ones you had there to put them back. Also, there is a separate section here for Widgets and you can have Widget Style set to automatic, set to Monochrome, or Full Color. So the idea with the automatic is what we have seen so far. When the Desktop is the thing you're looking at you're going to see them in full color. When there is another window they are kind of monochrome. But if you set it to Monochrome Always, well then you see now even when I'm looking at the Desktop as the main thing they are always going to be this faded look here. On the other hand if I were to go and change it to Full Color, you can see they're Full Color, even when another window is active on top of those. Plus there is another setting here for Use iPhone Widgets. So this will basically turn On or Off the ability to grab widgets from your iPhone with iOS 17. 

Now if all this seems a little bit familiar, well, it's because Apple used to have a feature just like this called Dashboard. It worked kind of as a separate Desktop space. Kind of over to the left of all the others but could also be used to just basically appear on your Desktop. Now that went away years ago and it had a lot of differences with this functionality here. One of the things people hated about that was that it really used a lot of processor power. So if you put some Dashboard widgets on the screen then you would find kind of high CPU use just from those and they weren't useful enough to justify that. I've got a feeling these widgets are far more optimized to basically be there on your Desktop Wallpaper without actually taking up much more processor time. 

It will be interesting to see what new apps may appear now that we can do this as part of the operating system and which apps we already have that may add widgets as extra functionality. Because an app doesn't have to be just about the widget. It could be an app that does something completely different like the ones I'm showing here and just adding that widget as an extra part of the app to display some sort of information that you may want to see, kind of all the time on your wallpaper. In the past if developers wanted to do that kind of thing they really had to build their own kind of interface for showing information. But now they can just make a simple widget like this and you can place it on your wallpaper.   

What do you think of the new widget functionality? Are you looking forward to using it? Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.