BetterMacWidgets

CHANGELOG

What’s new in BetterMacWidgets

A clear record of new features, improvements, and fixes. Updates are signed, notarized, and free for everyone.

BetterMacWidgets 2.0.1

CURRENT

August 27, 2026

Small changes

  • A few small changes and fixes.

BetterMacWidgets 2.0.0

August 26, 2026

Four looks, a ring, and a lot less idle work

  • The Apps widget has four looks instead of one. Grid keeps the icons and names you know and holds the most. Dock puts large icons on a shelf that grow under the pointer. List gives every app its own line — the easiest to hit, and it reads long names. Tiles puts each app on a card washed in the colour of its own icon.
  • Every size, and room for 35 apps. The 3×3 and 4×3 layouts were written long ago but never offered; they hold 25 and 35 icons. The old limit was 15, which meant the biggest tile could never be filled.
  • Drag apps onto the widget straight from the Finder, reorder them, and see which ones are open — a running app gets a small dot.
  • The Timer grew up. The large sizes draw a countdown ring you can read across a room instead of a longer bar. It plays a sound when it ends (seven to choose from, or none), takes a label like “Tea” or “Laundry”, and you can keep up to three at once.
  • A running timer survives quitting the app. What is stored is the moment it ends, not the time left — so a Mac that slept for ten minutes comes back to a timer that is ten minutes further along, exactly like a kitchen timer would have been.
  • The Network widget finally has settings: watch one connection instead of all of them added together (which counts VPN traffic twice), switch between MB/s and the Mbit/s your internet plan is sold in, and hide your local address on a desktop that ends up in screenshots. It also gained five sizes and a full minute of history.
  • Clocks stopped costing anything. A clock showing 14:32 was being rebuilt sixty times a minute to display the same two numbers. Six of them measured 1.3% of a processor core before and 0.0% after.
  • The pictures got honest. Numbers that roll when they change were showing the value they were rolling away from in every generated preview, the Apps widget rendered as a yellow warning sign in the gallery, and a snowy forecast was captioned 21°C.

BetterMacWidgets 1.9.2

August 25, 2026

Freeze fix

  • Fixed a bug that could freeze the app while placing widgets.

BetterMacWidgets 1.9.1

August 25, 2026

Fixes you asked for

  • Sticky Notes can be typed into on the desktop. Until now the note took the caret and then dropped every keystroke: desktop widgets live in a window that never makes the app active, and keyboard input only ever reaches the active app. The first click now asks for the keyboard, a soft ring shows the note has it, and Escape hands it straight back.
  • A new Sticky Note starts blank. Adding a second one copied the first one's text, because the settings pane edits the note already on the desktop. Paper colour and typeface still carry over — what you wrote does not. The same line now separates settings from content for the Drop Zone, the photo frame and the countdown.
  • The World Clock can show 12-hour time, with AM/PM per city — it is not the same half of the day in Tokyo as it is in New York.
  • App icons fill their tile. They were a fixed size no matter how big the widget was, which left them floating in the middle of a mostly empty 2×1. On that size they are now two thirds larger.
  • Less work while the app sits idle: photos are scaled down as they are decoded, the settings window releases its contents when you close it, and widgets that only change by the minute are no longer woken every second.

BetterMacWidgets 1.9.0

August 12, 2026

Build Your Own

  • Custom Widgets (Beta): a widget you write yourself, as 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 appears on your desktop like every other widget. Five templates to start from, a live preview while you type, and export so you can hand the file to somebody else.
  • A custom widget can only read the one address it names. It cannot run commands or open files, including one that arrived from a stranger — and an exported file never carries the request headers you typed, so your API token stays on your Mac.
  • Custom Widgets is part of Pro. Building and previewing is free; putting one on the desktop is not.
  • Now Playing, Photos and Battery are Pro from now on. Copies placed before 1.8 were exempt until now; that exemption ends with this release, so without Pro they leave the desktop. Everything you set up comes back the moment you unlock.
  • The free Pro trial has been withdrawn. Every Pro feature previews live inside the app instead, and a trial already running keeps going until it ends by itself.
  • Pro is now €12.99 for one Mac, €15.99 for two and €17.99 for three. Still a one-time purchase, still every future update included. Keys bought at the old price are unaffected.
  • Fixed: choosing a language saved the choice but showed no sign that a restart was needed, which looked exactly like a picker that does nothing.

BetterMacWidgets 1.8.0

August 11, 2026

Bug fixes

  • Fixes and refinements throughout.
  • Pro-only sizes now carry the crown in the size picker, so it is clear at a glance which sizes need Pro.

BetterMacWidgets 1.7.0

August 9, 2026

The Widgets Got Bigger

  • Two sizes above the previous largest: 3×3 and 4×3. Weather gains a twelve-hour temperature curve and the full week beside it, and System becomes a proper dashboard — every reading, its history, and how many gigabytes are actually free rather than just a percentage.
  • Devices shows ten connections instead of six, the Calendar gets a month grid you can read across the room, and World Clock, Photos, Apps, Network and the Sticky Note all grew as well.
  • The Sticky Note now holds several notes. Switch between them with the chips on the tile, or manage them in the settings — your existing note becomes the first of the stack.
  • World Clock finds cities the time-zone database doesn’t name. Frankfurt, Munich, Barcelona, Boston, Osaka and about ninety more now resolve to the right zone — and the tile shows the name you searched for, not the zone’s capital.
  • Fixed: widgets could shudder while you dragged them, most noticeably near a screen edge. Two parts of the app were writing the window position at the same time, about ninety times a second, and disagreeing.
  • Fixed: the Devices widget offered a Connect button for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. macOS cannot connect to those over Bluetooth at all, so the button could only ever fail; it now explains that instead. Their battery still appears as before.

BetterMacWidgets 1.6.0

August 7, 2026

Your Cities, Your Grid, Your Glass

  • World Clock lets you pick your own cities. Search any city in the world, add up to six, and drag them into the order you want — the smaller sizes show the first ones in your list.
  • The Unit Converter now converts money too, with live European Central Bank rates. Handy when a video quotes dollars and you think in pounds.
  • Weather shows air quality in its larger sizes: the European air quality index with its official colour scale, plus the particulate reading behind it.
  • The grid is adjustable. If you also use Apple’s own desktop widgets, you can now match our cell size and spacing to theirs so the two sets stop landing on top of each other.
  • New Tint setting for the glass: keep it light or dark whatever macOS is doing. The tile background no longer has to follow your system appearance.
  • Fixed: the license key field on the Pro page was too easy to miss after buying — it is now open and labelled instead of hidden behind a link.
  • Fixed: widgets could shudder while you dragged them, most noticeably near a screen edge. Two parts of the app were writing the window position at the same time and disagreeing about ninety times a second.

BetterMacWidgets 1.5.0

August 4, 2026

Try Pro Free for 3 Days

  • You can now try Pro free for three days, started from inside the app under Settings → Premium. No account, no email address, no payment details — and one trial per Mac.
  • It ends by itself. There is nothing to cancel, it can never charge you, and it does not turn into a subscription. When the three days are up, the Pro widgets and themes switch off and the free version carries on exactly as before.
  • Everything you set up during the trial stays put. Unlock later and your widgets, themes and layouts are right back where you left them.
  • New after unlocking: a short hint explaining why desktop widgets only animate while you hover them — the Balanced energy setting — with a button that switches to High right there.
  • The click-through slideshow that ran after every update is gone. What changed now lives in Software Update, where you can read it when you want to instead of clicking past it on launch.

BetterMacWidgets 1.4.1

August 2, 2026

Two More Widgets Are Now Free

  • Currencies and Starfield have moved from Pro to the free set. Live exchange rates from the European Central Bank and the drifting star field are now available to everyone, in every size, with all their settings.
  • Nothing changes if you already own Pro — everything stays unlocked, and the free set simply grew from 14 widgets to 16.

BetterMacWidgets 1.4.0

August 1, 2026

German, Finished Properly

  • German is now complete to the last corner: license messages, error states, every switch and every menu. Previously a handful of places still answered in English — including, awkwardly, the messages you see when a license key does not work.
  • Dates, weekdays and numbers now follow the language you picked in the app. Before, they kept using your macOS system language, so an English interface could still print „Mittwoch, 29. Juli“. Your region is still respected — pick English in Austria and you keep Austrian date order.
  • Fixed: the Sticky Note showed two font pickers that wrote to the same setting and disagreed with each other. There is one now, and older notes keep their font.
  • Fixed: “Restart Now” after changing the language quit the app without bringing it back.
  • Fixed: hiding the Dock icon did not always survive a restart. The setting was applied once, very early in launch, where macOS does not reliably honour it — it is now re-applied and verified after launch, so a login-item start behaves like any other.

BetterMacWidgets 1.3.0

July 29, 2026

Three New Widgets, and German

  • New Pro widget — Clipboard history: the last things you copied, one click to put any of them back. Kept in memory only, never written to disk, and anything your password manager marks as confidential is skipped.
  • New Pro widget — Drop Zone: park files on a tile and drag them back out later. Nothing is copied or moved; the widget only remembers where they live.
  • New Pro widget — Currencies: live exchange rates from the European Central Bank. No account, no API key.
  • The whole app is now available in German — every label, menu, settings pane and widget. Dates, units and system dialogs follow the chosen language too.
  • New setting under General → Language: System, English or Deutsch. “System” follows macOS.

BetterMacWidgets 1.2.0

July 27, 2026

Pro for More Than One Mac

  • Pro now comes for 1, 2 or 3 Macs — €9.99, €12.99 or €14.99, still a one-time purchase with lifetime updates.
  • It is always the same key: enter it on each Mac you bought it for.
  • Removing the license on a Mac frees that spot immediately, so you can move it to a new machine yourself.
  • The Premium page shows which spot the Mac you are on is using.

BetterMacWidgets 1.1.3

July 26, 2026

Widgets Stay Put Through Sleep

  • Fixed: widgets no longer move, overlap or scatter after your Mac wakes from sleep or you open the lid.
  • Widgets on a second display now return to their exact spot when you plug the monitor back in.

BetterMacWidgets 1.1.2

July 25, 2026

Hide the Dock Icon

  • New setting under General → Dock: hide the Dock icon and run BetterMacWidgets from the menu bar only.
  • The menu bar icon stays put — click it any time to reopen the settings window. Your widgets are unaffected.
  • The What's New tour no longer reappears after small bug-fix updates.

BetterMacWidgets 1.1.1

July 22, 2026

Your Layout Stays Put

  • Fixed: widgets you moved, added or removed shortly before quitting could reappear in their old spot after a restart.
  • A license check that is still in flight can no longer remove Pro widgets from your desktop.

BetterMacWidgets 1.1.0

July 21, 2026

Widget Stacks, Clear Glass & a Guided Tour

  • Widget Stacks — drop a widget onto another of the same size and flick through them with the ‹ › arrows (Pro).
  • Widgets never overlap: drop a tile on a neighbour it can't stack with and it slides to the nearest free spot.
  • New Clear glass look — the tile disappears entirely, leaving only the widget's content on your wallpaper (Pro).
  • Frosted stays free and fully adjustable with its own 0–100% opacity slider.
  • A short What's New tour on first launch and after every update.
  • Every widget now opens at its largest size in the settings window.

BetterMacWidgets 1.0.4

July 20, 2026

Appearance Menu Crash Fix

  • Fixed an app crash when selecting 'Appearance' (Darstellung) in the menu bar.

BetterMacWidgets 1.0.3

July 20, 2026

Light Mode Glass Fix & Sharper Opacity Slider

  • Widgets are no longer washed out in macOS Light mode — glass tiles now use dark tints on bright desktops for clear visual separation.
  • The Opacity slider in Frosted mode now has a clearly perceptible effect across its full range in both Light and Dark appearance.

BetterMacWidgets 0.4.0

July 16, 2026

Live Calendar, Pro Polish & Smart Layouts

  • Live Calendar integration with actual upcoming events (Pro).
  • The largest Weather widget (wide-tall) is now a Pro feature.
  • Pro Showcase animations in settings now always play for a better preview.
  • Create and switch named widget profiles for work, focus, evening, or any setup you choose.
  • Profiles remember their widgets and map placement sensibly across changing display configurations.
  • Pro adds automatic switching by time, foreground application, or connected display.
  • Configuration-window rendering is leaner and smoother while the app is in the foreground.
  • General stability improvements and localized weekday symbols.
  • Bug fixes.

BetterMacWidgets 0.2.8

July 13, 2026

Reliable automatic updates

  • New versions can be found and installed through the built-in updater.
  • Refund and withdrawal wording was clarified.
  • Stability improvements across the app.

BetterMacWidgets 0.2.6

July 13, 2026

Pro activation and polish

  • Buy Pro and activate your licence directly inside the app.
  • Improved desktop performance and smoother window movement.
  • Removing a licence no longer locks the app; the key can simply be entered again.
Download the latest versionNeed help with an update?