Widgets have been available on Mac in one form or another for nearly 20 years, but they've always been locked to a secondary panel or screen. Now, widgets are coming to the desktop, and iPhone owners get extra features.

Apple has revealed a few features in the next Mac system update, macOS Sonoma, which includes a significant overhaul of widgets. Widgets are still visible below your notifications on macOS, but in macOS Sonoma, you'll also have the option to pin them to your desktop. It looks a lot like Gadgets on Windows Vista and 7, or desktop widgets on KDE Plasma on desktop Linux. The widgets will even use accent colors based on your desktop background.

If you have an iPhone, you'll even be able to add widgets from your iPhone to your Mac, with the contents streamed from the phone as needed. For example, Apple showed off how you can start a car remotely from your Mac using the car's iPhone widget. It's a helpful workaround for all the Mac apps that don't offer native widgets, but you do need an iPhone, and it must be near the Mac.

The new widget functionality will be available in macOS Sonoma, coming later this year as a free update for supported Macs.

Source: Apple