Keyboard Shortcut to bring up the Gadgets in Windows 7
If you are new here, Subscribe to Full Feeds or by Email or follow us in Twitter and receive free daily updates on Office and Windows Tips, Tricks and Tweaks..
The Gadgets in Windows 7 which used to called as Vista Sidebar Gadgets are very helpful to give information which are accessed quite often like Time at different zones, Calendar, Weather etc with quick access. They are equivalent of the Mac Dashboard Widgets or Yahoo Widgets. Here is a quick tip on how you can bring up the gadgets on top of the current application you are running.
Here is the picture of the Windows 7 desktop with the running gadgets.
While running any application or viewing or browsing any folder or at any given time, if you would like to see the gadgets just use the Keyboard Shortcut Win Key + G to bring up the gadgets on top of the current window.
To return back, just click on any other space in the current window.
Windows 7 gadgets on top of the Windows Explorer.
Windows 7 Gadgets accessed while using Office applications.
I still wish it would dim the current application so that the gadgets would stand out and be bright.
No way to hide them with the keyboard? Lame.
See, with Vista you can show/hide the gadgets with Win+Space. Does this not work anymore then?
Also, I actually love that there’s no sidebar to Win7’s gadgets, but that they can “snap” to all four edges of the screen, isn’t that cool? I second the desire to provide a dim (or even solid, like Konfabulator) background to widgets when they’re active.
Actually, what I’d love most is the full Apple Dashboard experience; widgets totally hidden except for when activated by keyboard shortcut, then a Widget dashboard that takes over the screen. To me, the greatest benefits of having widgets at all is that they’re small, they’re always up-to-date, and you can fit them all onscreen at once, providing a panel full of glanceable information.