Feature: Applets as desktop widgets

[joewood9364]

Widgets in general are making a comeback if we look at other operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS all have them now).
I don't think KDE or Gnome are moving in the direction of allowing widgets on the desktop - Cosmic could really take the Linux DE spotlight if this feature was added.

[ryanabx]

The one "desktop widget" I'd consider making if this were a thing would be a desktop files widget, showing all the files in the Desktop folder

[TheESN]

KDE still has plasmoids. They were never removed since KDE Plasma 4

[Drakulix]

Technically this is not really difficult, as cosmic-panel is just a layer-shell client and could spawn a translucent, non-exclusive window covering the whole screen to place applets on.

However there is more to this than the technical aspects. Currently size of the applets depends on the size of the panel, what would be the default size of widgets? How would you resize or move them?

We have plans for more interactive re-ordering of widgets with drag&drop, etc. So allowing them to be dragged onto the desktop eventually might make a lot of sense. But until then we will need more UX work for this feature. So don't expect this any time soon.

[joewood9364]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPUMtfJVyqo
I don't own a mac but from what I've seen macOS is the only desktop OS which has a polished desktop widget experience (Windows has a widget panel or something now?) so looking at how they do things might be useful.

Having an Android phone and tablet I do want to put out there that I like how apps can bring their own widgets when installed rather than users needing to install via a separate "widget store".
For example, if I install a weather app then I get its own set of weather widgets automatically.
Would it be technically possible to achieve this on Linux so for example a Flatpak app can contain its own set of widgets?

[TheESN]

Technically this is not really difficult, as cosmic-panel is just a layer-shell client and could spawn a translucent, non-exclusive window covering the whole screen to place applets on.

However there is more to this than the technical aspects. Currently size of the applets depends on the size of the panel, what would be the default size of widgets? How would you resize or move them?

We have plans for more interactive re-ordering of widgets with drag&drop, etc. So allowing them to be dragged onto the desktop eventually might make a lot of sense. But until then we will need more UX work for this feature. So don't expect this any time soon.

KDE Plasma allows to resize them as soon as they placed by using the frame that is similar to one that COSMIC already has in screenshot tool for cropping selection