By Delia / Last update January 17, 2022

Windows 11 adopts a yearly iteration strategy and version 2022 is currently under development. The internal development code for this version is Sun Valley 2, which will bring many of the improvements expected by the outside world.

widgets windows 11

The current version of Windows 11 has a number of problems, including the recommended content of the Start menu cannot be blocked, the number of APP icons is limited, and so on. In addition, the new desktop widget feature does not support three-party programs, and your options are limited to Microsoft Calendar, Movies & TV, To-Do, and more.

However, the recently updated developer guidance document confirms that Windows 11 will open up support for three-party desktop widgets, with the slight regret that these programs must be Web-based and not native Win32 or UWP.

It is worth mentioning that the developer documentation also mentions the content of "adaptive activity cards", which are used to concatenate the host UI to ensure low memory and CPU usage, without affecting the smoothness of the whole machine.

Previously, it was revealed that the official Windows 11 2022 release, codenamed Sun Valley 2, is scheduled to be completed in May, with a full push starting in the summer, and full support for Android APKs is also expected to be fully online.

Windows 11 widget API will be opened soon

One of the new features of Microsoft Windows 11 is "widgets", a feature that allows users to look at information such as weather, stocks, news, etc. Users can arrange the location and size of the widgets themselves, much like the dynamic tiles of Windows 8/10 before. However, Windows 11 widgets do not support open third parties, and users can only use a few official Microsoft components at the moment.

According to Windows developer FireCube, who found some evidence from the Microsoft App Store terms, this may be about to change.

fire cube

From the screenshots of the store, it looks like the widget API will soon be open and apps will be able to create custom widgets, just like dynamic tiles, and even websites will be able to support widgets.

According to the description, widgets will be adaptive and have a small resource footprint, and the build will be open.

It's not clear when Microsoft will open widgets, but the store information indicates that Microsoft is working on it. With diverse widget support, we may be able to see a more diverse use of dynamic tiles than the original.