Calendar Gadget

Nowadays, with the digitization of both work and personal lifestyles, people may be overwhelmed by the choices they have in terms of organizing their schedules. At some point in time, Microsoft offered a suite of movable widgets that people could use to preview information on the fly.

While that part of the operating system is now being rebooted into a dedicated widget section in Windows 11, some users may feel the need for a simple date and schedule preview widget on their desktops, which is where Calendar Gadget comes into play.

When booting up the program for the first time, users will be met with an elegantly designed interface, reminiscent of Microsoft’s Windows 7 Aero theme, meant to emulate transparent glass borders and rounded corners.

This particular aesthetic can be useful for those who are nostalgic for the old design language, people who want a modern and safe replacement for a part of the defunct gadget suite or for those who have customized their modern version of Windows to resemble the Aero theme and are missing the desktop gadgets.

Thanks to its widget capabilities, the program can be placed anywhere on the screen, letting users organize their desktop in whatever way they see fit. When not in the cursor’s focus, the calendar increases its transparency and decreases the contrast to be less obtrusive and make way for the wallpaper behind it.

Dragging the bottom right corner of the application resizes it to any length, making the days more spaced out and readable, which is a great feature for users with lower visual acuity. In order to avoid placing it outside the screen’s edges, the widget conveniently snaps to the desktop margins.

The app has support for multiple Google account synchronization for displaying events and tasks from your Google Calendar, in order to quickly preview your schedule for the month by hovering your cursor over your desired day. Unfortunately, all events appear duplicated, regardless of their settings, which can cause confusion for users with busy schedules.

Moreover, right-clicking on any day lets users add a certain number of days, weeks, months or years to that particular date in order to place a reminder or a countdown of sorts, which can be useful for daily medication intake reminders for a set amount of time, or for displaying abstinence goals to help you quit smoking or take up jogging.

Finally, a bottom-placed refresh button that shows the current date and time can be pressed to load any changes made to the Google Calendar.

Whether you want a simple and movable calendar to place on your desktop in order to avoid clicking on the taskbar, or you wish to relive the old days of Windows 7’s Aero themed desktop gadget suite, Calendar Gadget can provide you with the current date and scheduled Google events in a sleek interface.