Introduced with macOS Sonoma, the ability to add Widgets to your Mac’s desktop is very useful for keeping an eye on the weather forecast, the outline of your schedule, or even the headlines from the press. . Here’s how to configure this feature to take advantage of it in minutes.
View your schedule, the charge level of your Apple devices, the weather, the stock market listing of your favorite companies, or even the latest news, directly on your Mac desktop.
All this is possible, without any particular difficulty, using a functionality now offered natively by Apple: the addition of widgets, no longer only in the notification center, but also on the desktop of any compatible Mac with macOS Sonoma. We’ll walk you through step-by-step how to take advantage of this feature on your hardware.
How to add widgets to the macOS desktop?
The method is simple, all you have to do is first go to the desktop of your Mac, then click anywhere on the wallpaper with the “Control” key on the keyboard pressed. A window then appears, with the option “Modify widgets”. This is what interests us, click on it.
The widget gallery is then displayed at the bottom of the screen, with a general tab and tabs specific to each widget available on your device. All that remains is to select the widget(s) you want to add to your Mac’s desktop.
To do this, there are two possibilities:
- Click on the green button with a small “+” which appears hovering over the upper left corner of each widget;
- Or “drag/drop” to the desktop with a click and hold with the trackpad or mouse.
Finally note that each widget added to the desktop can then be repositioned with the same “drag/drop” method, and that it is possible to modify or delete the widgets added to the desktop one by one via a simple click with the Control key pressed. (or two-finger click on the trackpad). The window below will then appear.
It is also possible to remove widgets installed on the desktop using the “–” button displayed in their upper left corner when the widget gallery is open (as shown in the screenshot above).
How to use iPhone Widgets on macOS?
Alternatively, note that the deployment of iOS 17 also made it possible, for the first time, to add widgets from applications installed on your iPhone to macOS. Some prerequisites are nevertheless current:
- Have an iPhone running iOS 17 (or later system version)
- Make sure your iPhone and Mac are signed in to the same Apple ID
- Check that your iPhone and Mac are connected to the same Wi-Fi network
If these three criteria are met, you can then go to the “System Settings” of your Mac, then to the “Desktop and Dock” tab and finally to the “Widgets” section to activate (if it is not already (if applicable) the “Use widgets for iPhone” option.
Once you’ve completed these steps, your iPhone’s app widgets appear directly in the macOS widget gallery. All that remains is to dispatch them wherever you want using the method detailed above.