BetterMacWidgets

For macOS 15+

Your desktop, alive.

BetterMacWidgets puts 25 Mac desktop widgets right where you work — many live-animated, all free-floating with drag & drop and an invisible snap grid. And fully private: no telemetry.

macOS 15+ · Apple Silicon · free forever

No telemetry · 25 widgets · 20 themes

Live Weather

Weather that plays the sky.

RettenbergClear
28°
Feels like 26°22°31°
Now28°
1729°
1829°
1928°
FORECAST
Fri22°31°
Sat21°29°
Sun23°32°
Mon20°27°
06:3020:45

Forecasts are real: Open-Meteo data for your precise or approximate location — or any custom city you type in.

LIQUID GLASS

CLEAR IS PRO

Clear, actually clear.

Frosted is a real glass pane you can tune from 0 to 100%. Clear removes the tile entirely — only the widget's content floats on your wallpaper.

CLEAR
15:26:57Friday, 10 Jul
FROSTED 50%
15:26:57Friday, 10 Jul
Frosted opacity50%

Frosted — free, and adjustable

A translucent glass card with its own 0–100% opacity slider. Minimal glass that lets your wallpaper shine through, or a dense pane — your call.

Clear — the Pro look

The tile itself disappears. No fill, no rim, no card — just your widgets' content, floating directly on the wallpaper with a soft legibility shadow.

WIDGET STACKS

PRO

One slot. As many widgets as you like.

Drop a widget onto another of the same size and they merge into a single stack — flick through the members whenever you like.

How it works

  1. 1Drag one widget on top of another on your desktop.
  2. 2They merge into a single slot — one widget on show at a time.
  3. 3Hover the tile and use the ‹ › arrows to flick through; the dots show where you are.
  4. 4Right-click for “Show Next” and “Rotate Every” to switch automatically.

The rules

Same size only

A 3×2 stacks with another 3×2, never with a 2×2. Mixed sizes would leave the smaller widget rattling around inside the bigger slot, so they're pushed apart instead.

Widgets never overlap otherwise

Drop a tile on a neighbour it can't stack with and it slides to the nearest free spot.

Stacking is part of BetterMacWidgets Pro — the demo above is exactly how it behaves on your desktop.

The Widgets

Twenty-two widgets. Made for your desktop.

Every tile below is the real widget, rebuilt for the web — same design, same interactions, same themes. Go on, hover around.

Now Playing

Your music, living on glass.

Artwork, marquee titles and real playback progress, mirrored straight from Spotify or Apple Music. Play, pause and skip right on the tile — your desktop becomes the remote.

SpotifyDEMO
Midnight City
M83
YouTube MusicDEMO
Midnight City
M83
1:14-2:20

System Pulse

Watch your Mac breathe.

Animated gauges for CPU, GPU, memory and disk, plus a liquid battery that actually sloshes while it charges. Idle cost stays near zero — widgets only animate while you're looking.

System
27
CPU27%
24
GPU24%
70
RAM11/16 GB
86
Disk30 GB free
CPU
47%
BatteryOn batteryCalculating…

Productivity

Check it off. Jot it down.

Reminders come straight from Apple Reminders — tick a checkbox on the widget and it syncs right back. Next to it, a sticky note that lives on your desktop: your text, your paper color, your font.

4
Reply to Anna1d ago
Pick up groceries18:00
Submit expense reportin 19h
Water the plantsin 1d

Time & Date

Every timezone at a glance.

An analog face with a sweeping second hand, world clocks for the cities you care about, and a calendar that highlights today. All ticking on one shared, battery-friendly heartbeat.

New York−6h
09:26
London−1h
14:26

Ambient

A desktop that dreams.

A starfield drifts on a canvas of its own while the Photos widget plays a slow Ken-Burns slideshow of any folder you pick. No photo-library access, no cloud — your pictures never leave your Mac.

Market & World

The whole world, on glass.

A crypto ticker whose digits flash when prices move, and a world map whose day-night line follows the real sun — recomputed from the actual time, so it always matches the sky outside your window.

World
B
Bitcoin
2.34%
ETH1.12%

Toolbox

Small tools, big time-savers.

A live clock, a timer, a stopwatch with lap splits, a unit converter and a password generator — compact where it helps, with wider layouts where the content needs room. Scatter them wherever you need them; they snap neatly into the grid.

5:00
00:00.00
Ready
mkm
1
0.0010
18 ch

Command Center

Launch apps. Watch your gear.

A launcher grid puts your favorite apps one click away, one-tap Shortcut buttons run your automations, the Network widget draws a live throughput chart, and the Bluetooth widget reads real battery levels from your headphones, mouse and keyboard.

4.2MB/s
317KB/s
AirPods ProConnected
82%
Magic KeyboardConnected
64%

Snap Grid

Arrange anything, anywhere — invisible snap grid.

Drag any widget across the desktop and it glides into place. 25 widgets, 20 themes, one grid.

RettenbergRain
28°
Feels like 26°22°31°
Now28°
1729°
1829°
1928°
System
27
CPU27%
24
GPU24%
70
RAM11/16 GB
86
Disk30 GB free
CPU
4
Reply to Anna1d ago
Pick up groceries18:00
Submit expense reportin 19h
Water the plantsin 1d
SpotifyDEMO
Midnight City
M83
New York−6h
09:26
London−1h
14:26
AirPods ProConnected
82%
Magic KeyboardConnected
64%
mkm
1
0.0010
18 ch
47%
BatteryOn batteryCalculating…
4.2MB/s
317KB/s
New Year
174d
5:00
00:00.00
BTC2.34%
27
CPU27%
24
GPU24%
28°

EVERY SIZE

One widget. Six shapes.

A bigger tile is not the same tile stretched. Every size is drawn for the room it has — pick one and watch the System widget rebuild itself.

27
CPU27%
24
GPU24%
70
RAM11/16 GB
86
Disk30 GB free
MEMORY
11 GB5 GB free
STORAGE
464 GB30 GB free
CPUpeak34%ø 24%
GPUpeak33%ø 24%
RAMpeak57%ø 54%
Diskpeak80%ø 79%

Gigabytes instead of percentages, peak and average beside them.

Live components at app-exact pixels — the same views the app renders.

CUSTOM WIDGETS

PROBETA

Can't find the widget you want? Write it.

One small JSON file. Say what it should show — a reading from your Mac, the time, or a number from any JSON address — and it lands on your desktop like every other widget.

my-mac.bmwidget
{
  "schema" : 1,
  "name" : "My Mac",
  "symbol" : "cpu",
  "accent" : "#5B8DEF",
  "sizes" : [ "wide", "large", "wideTall" ],
  "rows" : [
    {
      "align" : "leading",
      "elements" : [
        { "type" : "gauge", "text" : "{cpu}",
          "color" : "accent", "min" : 0, "max" : 100 },
        { "type" : "text",  "text" : "CPU {cpu} %",
          "color" : "primary", "style" : "headline" }
      ]
    },
    {
      "elements" : [
        { "type" : "text", "text" : "Memory",
          "color" : "secondary", "style" : "caption" },
        { "type" : "bar",  "text" : "{ram}",
          "color" : "accent", "min" : 0, "max" : 100 }
      ]
    },
    {
      "align" : "leading",
      "elements" : [
        { "type" : "text", "text" : "{disk.free} GB free",
          "color" : "secondary", "style" : "caption" }
      ]
    }
  ]
}
42CPU 42 %
Memory
286 GB free
on your desktop

Custom Widgets is part of Pro, and marked Beta while the format settles. Building and previewing is free; putting one on the desktop is not.

SMART LAYOUTS

PRO AUTOMATION

The right desktop for every part of your day.

Save named widget profiles, keep their positions sensible across displays, and switch the whole desktop in one step.

4
Reply to Anna1d ago
Pick up groceries18:00
Submit expense reportin 19h
Water the plantsin 1d
27
CPU27%
24
GPU24%
15:26
47%
4.2MB/s
317KB/s

Pick a profile — the desktop swaps live.

Monitor-adaptive profiles

Each profile remembers its widgets and placement, then maps them cleanly when your display setup changes.

Smart switching with Pro

Activate a profile by time, the app in the foreground, or the display that is connected.

Private and local

Profiles and rules stay on your Mac. No account, cloud sync, analytics, or activity history.

Switch when
09:00Xcode is activeStudio Display connects

Manual profile switching is always one click away. Smart rules are included with BetterMacWidgets Pro.

Themes

20 themes. One click.

3 free + 17 Pro palettes included

15:26:57Friday, 10 Jul
47%
DEMO
Midnight City
M83

Pick a palette — every widget on your desktop retints instantly. Surfaces, accents, text, hairlines: one theme, everywhere.

DOWNLOAD

Free. On your desktop in a minute.

No account, no telemetry, nothing that expires. Download, drag into Applications, done.

macOS 15+ · Apple Silicon · ~6 MB DMG · notarized by Apple
Every widget and theme unlocked — one-time purchase, every future update included.
What's new in 2.0.1
Live widgets

Weather, music, clocks, reminders and more — animated and interactive.

Anywhere on your desktop

Free-floating with drag & drop and an invisible snap grid.

Private by design

No telemetry. Your data never leaves your Mac.

FAQ

Questions, answered.

Yes. The free version is a full app, not a trial: 13 of the 25 widgets in their supported, individually designed sizes, 3 themes, free-floating drag & drop with the invisible snap grid — no account, no time limit, no watermarks. Pro is an optional one-time upgrade on top.

No subscription. Pro is a one-time purchase with lifetime updates included — €12.99 for 1 Mac, €15.99 for 2, €17.99 for 3. You receive a license key (BWG-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX) by email and activate it in the app under Settings → Premium.

BetterMacWidgets requires macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later on Apple Silicon (M1 and newer). It's a native Mac app — notarized by Apple, with idle CPU usage near zero.

Privacy-first, by design: no telemetry, no analytics, no app account. Widget data stays on your Mac; network access is limited to weather and location lookups, Now-Playing artwork, license validation and signed update checks.

A license key is digital content delivered instantly: at checkout you expressly consent to immediate delivery, which ends your 14-day EU right of withdrawal once the key is sent (§356(5) BGB). So there are, as a rule, no refunds after delivery — but the whole app is free to try first, so you can evaluate everything before buying. If something is genuinely wrong, contact support and we'll find a fair solution.