One of the more notable new features coming to Windows 11 is support for third-party widgets. After what seems like an eternity, developers now have a chance to develop their own custom widgets.
Microsoft was about as brief as one could be on this, only mentioning that this new feature will be powered by Adaptive Cards, and promising more details later in the year. But the company may have shown off something big during a keynote on the matter during BUILD 2022.
A whole Teams widget in of itself!
As you know, a Teams widget does not yet exist in Windows 11 — publicly, at least.
And this is somewhat of a surprise, considering just how vital the communications platform is for the company, and how the shiny new widgets panel in the operating system could have benefited from something like this.
But it looks like we get a tease for this widget.
And what a tease it is!
Kevin Gallo put together a keynote titled “Building great apps with the open platform of Windows” as part of the developer event. And in the session, the Microsoft CVP talked about a Teams widget in Windows 11 — still non-existing — in present tense.
Fast forward the video to the 41:20 mark, and you will hear Gallo mentioning how the Teams widget shows where your next meeting is, so you can quickly join with a single click.
He also goes on about how Redmond is exploring other places where widgets can appear in Windows, and how these little applets make it easy to launch into the full app experience of the said application in the OS.
The image included in the presentation presumably showed some third-party widgets, most of which were generic mockups, not branded. However, the sample widget board did have multiple Teams widget including some that had sample Teams chats, as well as one that showed a mention.
So, while this is not a confirmation of any sorts, it is about as good a tease as it gets.
Because, after all, what reason would Microsoft have to show off a first-party widget like this when talking about third-party ones? Exactly why would the company do this? Guess we are about to find what’s cooking real soon.
