Third-party widgets in Windows 11 show their paws: this will be Facebook Messenger’s

The rumors later confirmed by an official announcement from Microsoft They are getting closer to becoming a reality. Windows 11 will support third-party widgetsa possibility that will open the door to extend the functionality of a feature that is very limited.

Although the widgets that we can explore from the dedicated button on the taskbar were one of the great novelties of Windows 11, they have been limited since its launch. Only Microsoft tools or applications were allowed, that is, nothing from third parties.

Say hello to widgets

The process for widgets to reach Microsoft’s new operating system is moving forward, step by step. an important step has materialized in recent times with developer releases of Windows App SDK 1.2 Y Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25284.

Developers now have a correspondingly improved SDK for creating widgets and a trial version of Windows 11 to test how it works. Meta is the first major company to announce a test version of its Messenger widget, which Insiders can try out now.

As we can see in the screenshots, the Messenger widget shows the latest conversations from the messaging application, with photos and contact names. Testing it is very simple. First of all, it is necessary to have the aforementioned development version of Windows and download the Messenger application from the Microsoft Store.

Once the application is downloaded and installed, you must open the widget board from the button located on the taskbar and click on the “+” button in the upper right. The next step is to choose the Messenger widget and pin it.

It should be noted that as the Windows version and the Messenger widget are in full development, they can still have errors. Microsoft admits that third-party widgets may disappear or may not even work as users expect.

If everything goes as expected, this functionality will reach the final versions of the operating system, expanding its availability to all users. Of course, we still do not know when that could happen since there is no calendar defined by Microsoft.

The next challenge is to motivate developers to create widgets for Windows 11. That is not always easy and is one of the great challenges that Microsoft faces, along with implementing an effective security framework to prevent platform issues.

As an example, we can remember that Windows 7 once supported what are called “Gadgets” from third-party developers. Those of Redmond, however, they backed down with this possibility after detecting “severe vulnerabilities” that endangered the safety of users.

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