Google Desktop Gadgets and Yahoo Widgets Yahoo Widgets

Download and install Yahoo Widgets

Yahoo describes its widgets as 'useful, fun, beautiful little apps for Mac and Windows', and claims that there are more than 5,000 Yahoo Widgets available to download.

The latest version is Yahoo Widgets 4.5, which is a 15MB download from widgets.yahoo.com/download/. Yahoo Widgets can run on Microsoft Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 SP4, Windows Vista and Mac OSX 10.3.9 and above. 

During installation it will automatically tick the boxes to set Yahoo as your homepage and also set your default search engine as Yahoo. Untick both boxes if you want to keep your default homepage and search engine.

Finding widgets

The Yahoo Widgets website lists more than 5,000 widgets, and includes highlights lists of the most popular widgets and the newest widgets. 

Popular Yahoo Widgets include:

• WebImages – automatically refreshes an image URL, for example a webcam 
• Picture Frame – connects to Flickr or Yahoo Pictures to display photos on your desktop
• Yahoo Mail – provides notification when you receive new email in your Yahoo Mail account
• iTunes Remote – a small widget to control and display music playback in Apple iTunes
• Day Planner – can connect to Yahoo Calendar or your Outlook calendar
• Weather – displays the current weather in your chosen location
• Yahoo Finance – shows latest financial information 
• World Clock Pro – a wide range of digital and analogue clocks are available to customise your desktop

Yahoo has a beginners' video guide to Yahoo Widgets to help you get started. 

Yahoo Widgets dock

Yahoo Widgets live on a docking bar, and can also be dragged anywhere on you desktop. The docking bar can fit an unlimited number of widgets, with scrollbars to navigate through large numbers of widgets.

The Yahoo Widgets bar can be docked and centred along any edge of your desktop. You can choose to show or hide individual widgets by clicking on the small 'minimise' icon that appears when you hover your mouse over a widget.

The magnifying glass icon on the Widgets bar opens a pop-up search box which then displays Yahoo search results in your browser.

The gearwheel icon on the Widgets bar brings up a context menu giving access to settings and preferences, and letting you sign in to your Yahoo account and download more widgets from widgets.yahoo.com