If you’ve complained that Windows’ personal Widgets merely muddle up your display screen with junk tales, concentrate: There are a number of new, helpful widgets {that a} current Microsoft app makes out there so that you can use.

You may not assume that the Microsoft Dev Home app would add something helpful to your PC, provided that it’s an app geared toward managing a developer’s pull requests. But the app really makes out there widgets to watch your CPU, reminiscence, GPU utilization, and community efficiency, too.

Neowin unearthed the new widgets in testing out the app. They’re much like what Windows’ personal Task Manager does, after all, with a couple of tweaks that might be helpful.

Microsoft’s Widgets are both a helpful gateway to extra content material, or only a bunch of junk info that clutters up your display screen. Microsoft beforehand invested in licensing information, and started launching experiments in 2020 with the News Bar to push that content material to you. (Our story additionally discusses the right way to handle Microsoft’s information sources, including and subtracting publications—nevertheless it’s uncertain that many individuals really do this.)

In 2021, Microsoft started migrating Bing’s news content to Windows 10’s “News and Interests,” which finally turned Windows 11’s Widgets, powered by Start. Microsoft then started inviting developers to populate the Widgets news feed final 12 months. Microsoft is pledging even greater control over Widgets, too.

Mark Hachman / IDG

All this implies, although, is that there’s an enormous space of your display screen that Microsoft is simply itching so that you can use.

To make the most of these new widgets, seek for the Dev Home (Preview) app on the Microsoft Store. Download and set up it—it’s about 400MB. You don’t have to configure the app, and even use it. Then click on on the Widgets icon within the decrease left-hand nook, after which the small “+” button on the prime.

This lets you add new Widgets, and it is best to see the CPU, reminiscence, GPU, and community widgets so that you can add, clustered on the prime of the listing.

Mark Hachman / IDG

The extra widgets don’t add as a lot because the detailed info that may be discovered throughout the Windows 11 Task Manager. The reminiscence widget, for instance, gives a couple of processes which you can click on to kill on the contact of a button. What the widget confirmed me, nonetheless, was the Windows Explorer course of that took up only a fraction of my out there reminiscence.

The different bug you might discover is that, even when pinned, the brand new widgets didn’t instantly “stick” to the highest of the Widgets window, as they need to. That bug appeared to resolve itself if you happen to opened and closed Widgets a couple of occasions.

Still, any try to make Widgets extra helpful must be applauded, proper?