I made my Home windows lock display screen far more helpful in 3 simple steps

2025 has been a busy 12 months for Microsoft, with the corporate tweaking and enhancing its flagship Home windows 11 working system in numerous key areas. Other than (lastly) throwing UI design aficionados a bone with some much-needed dark mode improvements, we have additionally acquired a revised Start Menu, upgraded battery iconography and share visibility choices, a handy drag dray interface for file sharing, and, naturally, a barrage of artifical intelligence tools and features.

One new Home windows 11 function that stands out to me specifically is the freshly-implemented means to pin widgets instantly onto the lock display screen, which provides some glanceability to what’s in any other case not probably the most helpful interface factor on the market. Changing the Windows 8-era “present app updates” function that only a few apps ever tapped into, Microsoft has lastly opened the floodgates in permitting full-blown widgets to be added proper to the lock display screen — a step in the suitable route in my view.

Working equally to the “Weather and more” option beforehand applied into Windows 11, these new widgets are full-sized and seem centered close to the underside of the lock display screen (however above the music participant). The large distinction is that, as of this newest replace, widgets may be manually pinned, organized, eliminated, and adjusted versus being locked to the usual set of climate, shares, search highlights, and sports activities updates.

Lock display screen widgets are configurable from inside Home windows 11’s Settings app

To get began with lock display screen widgets in your Home windows 11 pill, laptop computer, or desktop laptop, comply with these steps:

1. Launch the Settings utility.
2. Navigate to Personalization > Lock display screen.
3. From right here, toggle on the entry labeled Your widgets.

To entry the principle widgets picker menu, merely faucet or click on on the Add widget button situated subsequent to the Add widgets to your lock display screen textual content label. You may rearrange your widgets by utilizing the gripper handles discovered to the left of every widget itemizing, with choices to take away or tweak widget settings situated throughout the ellipsis (three-dot) menu on the right-hand aspect of every widget itemizing.

Any small-sized widget (full width, however with the minimal size) may be pinned to your lock display screen, with 4 separate and rearrange widgets in a position to be proven on-screen at a single time. On the time of writing, the next out-of-box widgets may be added to the lock display screen proper from the get-go:

• Calendar
• Countdown
• Each day Discovery
• Each day Surprise
• Occasions Close to You
• Focus Session
• Cellphone Hyperlink
• Images
• Sports activities
• In the present day’s Second
• Site visitors
• Watchlist
• Climate