Placing, Resizing and Styling Gadgets and Widgets on the Launcher Desktop

Touch and hold an empty square, tap Add an item.., choose Gadget and pick one. It lands where you pressed, at its starting size. What each gadget does is described in Desktop gadgets.

No empty square in sight? Tap Edit the desktop in the long-press menu, then the + button next to Done on the taskbar: the new item goes into the first free place, or into a new row below everything.

A gadget often needs more than one square. When you add it to a spot that is too small, the squares below slide down to make room - nothing is covered and nothing is lost.

If there is truly no way to fit it, you are told so instead of nothing happening: No room on the launcher desktop. Free a spot and try again. Remove or move something, or add another screen - see Arranging the desktop.

The app's widgets - calculator, camera, photo frame, music, recorder, favorites, scheduled operations and others - can sit on the launcher desktop too. Open Settings, the Management tab, and tap Add a gadget to the launcher desktop; the chosen one goes into the first free place and a short message says Added to the launcher desktop. The button is shown only while the launcher is on.

Some widgets need to be set up first. Random Photo Frame asks which resource to take photos from, and Quick capture asks which folder to save to. The square is placed only after you confirm; if you cancel, nothing is placed and nothing is left behind.

A widget on the desktop and the same widget on another home screen keep their own settings - two photo frames can show two different albums. Removing a square also forgets its settings. All widgets are described in FastMediaSorter widgets for your home screen.

Tap Edit the desktop in the long-press menu. Every square now shows a card, and each gadget has a handle in its corner. Drag the handle to make the gadget bigger or smaller - from its starting size up to the whole screen. Tap Done when it looks right.

The size is remembered, also after a restart. A few gadgets keep a sensible minimum: Clock goes down to two squares by one, and Translator always stays at least two rows high so its text and result fit.

Behind each gadget there is a light card. To make it lighter or heavier, open the launcher settings - from the long-press menu, from the Start menu, or through Settings, General, System launcher settings - and in the Appearance group tap Widget backdrop opacity. Pick from 0% (Transparent), which lets the wallpaper show through, to 100% (Opaque); 25% (Default) is the starting value.

The choice stays after a restart. While you arrange the desktop every square shows the full card anyway, so its edges are easy to see.

In the System group of the launcher settings, Reset launcher settings returns the desktop to its first state after a confirmation. It asks how densely to lay the icons out (Grid density: Sparse, Standard, Dense or Very dense) and opens on the choice that suits your device profile.

The starter Gadgets section is filled for your kind of device too: a photo frame gets an Image window, an e-book reader a Document window, a VR headset a Battery square. The settings of widgets you had placed are cleared with the reset, so nothing is left behind.