Desktop app: pin widgets to your desktop, focus from the menu bar

WidgetStore for desktop runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. It's a lightweight native app (not Electron, only a few MB): a sidebar on the left, and your start page, widgets, Focus space and data on the right. Any of your widgets can be pinned to your desktop, and the focus countdown lives in your menu bar or tray.

Download and install

Open the download page on your computer; it picks your system automatically.

macOS (Universal: Apple silicon and Intel, macOS 10.15+)

1. Open the .dmg and drag WidgetStore into Applications.
2. Recommended: open Terminal (⌘Space, type "Terminal"), paste and run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/WidgetStore.app", then open the app as usual. It only removes the "downloaded from the internet" quarantine flag (com.apple.quarantine) from this app. It doesn't touch other apps or turn off any security settings.
3. Without Terminal: double-click the app once (when macOS blocks it, click Done), then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom, click Open Anyway and confirm with your password. Since macOS 15 (Sequoia), Control-click → Open no longer bypasses Gatekeeper, so this is the way.

If it won't open

• "Apple could not verify… is free of malware" / "Not Opened": follow step 2 or 3 above.
• "WidgetStore is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash": run the command from step 2, then open it again. This comes from the quarantine flag plus the missing notarization, not a broken file; you can check the SHA-256 on the download page.
• No Open Anyway button in Privacy & Security: it only appears for about an hour after you try to open the app, so double-click it first.

Windows (Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit)

1. Run the installer (.exe). It installs for your account only, no admin rights needed. Use the .msi for IT deployment.
2. If Windows protected your PC (SmartScreen) appears, click More info → Run anyway.
3. On Windows 10 without WebView2, the installer downloads it for you.

Linux (64-bit, needs WebKitGTK 4.1: Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+, Fedora 37+)

• .deb: sudo apt install ./WidgetStore_*.deb; .rpm: sudo dnf install ./WidgetStore-*.rpm.
• AppImage: make it executable (chmod +x) and double-click it.
• The tray icon needs AppIndicator support (on GNOME, install the "AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support" extension).

Sign in

• Sign in with browser (recommended): your default browser opens; sign in with Google, Notion, WeChat or email, click Connect and return to the app, and you're back.
• Email inside the app: choose Sign in with email here on the welcome screen.
• Your sign-in is stored only on this computer (readable only by your user account). Settings → Sign out removes it.

Desktop widgets

1. In the sidebar, open My widgets and click Pin to desktop on any widget.
2. Hover the top edge of a widget to show its toolbar: drag the title to move it, drag the bottom-right corner to resize. Position and size are remembered and snap to a grid when you let go (change or turn off the grid in Settings).
3. Toolbar buttons:
   • Layer: on the desktop (default, behind other windows) / normal window / always on top;
   • State: movable → locked (can't move, but you can click inside the widget) → click-through (clicks go to the windows behind);
   • Reload, and remove from desktop (click twice to confirm; the widget itself isn't deleted).
4. To adjust a locked or click-through widget again, use Edit desktop widgets in the tray / menu bar, or Arrange next to Desktop widgets in the sidebar. Click a widget's name in the sidebar to show or hide it.

Focus timer and quick panel

• Start a session in your Focus space and the countdown appears in the macOS menu bar (next to the tray icon on Linux, in the tray tooltip on Windows), with a notification when time's up.
• Focus for 25 min right from the tray menu. Finished or stopped early, it's logged to your focus history (from 1 minute).
• Quick panel: press Ctrl+Shift+Space (⌘⇧Space on Mac) anywhere to start a session, add a to-do or tick one off. To-dos are the same ones you see on the web, in the Android app and in the browser extension.

Launcher: one shortcut to find anything

Press Alt+Space (⌥Space on a Mac) anywhere to open the launcher. Type a few letters to:

• open apps installed on this computer (with their own icons; search by name, English name or keywords);
• open sites from your start page (with their icons), your widgets (↵ pins it to the desktop) and spaces built with AI;
• run commands: start or stop focusing, add a to-do (type it, then pick “Add to-do: …”), build a space with AI, open your start page, Focus or My data, add or arrange desktop widgets;
• do quick math and unit conversions: 12*(3+4), 10 km to mi, 100 f in c — ↵ copies the result;
• and if nothing matches, search the web (by content region: Baidu in mainland China, Naver in Korea, Google elsewhere).

Keyboard: ↑↓ to select, ↵ to open, Ctrl+K (⌘K on a Mac) or Tab for more actions (show in folder, copy link, open in editor), Ctrl+1–9 to open a result directly, Esc to close. Things you use often move to the top; before you type, you see your desktop widgets, quick actions and recent items.

Change the shortcut in the tray / menu bar → “Settings…” → “Launcher settings” (you can also pick Ctrl+Space or turn it off). The list of apps on this computer, their icons and what you open stay on this computer and are never uploaded.

Apps: a better Launchpad

Press Shift+Alt+Space (⇧⌥Space on a Mac) or click Apps at the top of the sidebar for a full-screen grid of the apps on your computer, your start-page sites and your widgets (live), all together.

• Add widgets: tap Edit and a “+” appears at the top left — pick one of your widgets, choose Small / Medium / Large, and it drops into the grid, lined up with your app icons. You can also right-click empty space → “Add widget”, or use “…” at the top right. Right-click a widget to change its size; after removing one with “−” you can Undo for a few seconds.
• A separate Apps icon: Settings → “Launcher, Apps & AI usage” → Apps → “Apps icon”. It has its own icon (a grid with a widget) and opens Apps directly — not the WidgetStore main window. On a Mac, add it to the Dock in one click and use it like Launchpad; on Windows it goes in the Start menu (right-click it there → Pin to taskbar); on Linux it appears in your app list.
• Organize: drag to reorder; drag one icon onto another and hold to make a folder (rename it; drag an icon out of the box to take it out); tap Edit and use “−” to hide what you don’t need. Newly installed apps are added at the end.
• Find: just type to search (app names, English names, sites, widgets), ↵ opens the first result; arrow keys to move; swipe or scroll to change pages; Esc to close.
• Use it instead of the system one: add the Apps icon above and keep it in the Dock or taskbar; pick F4 as the shortcut (on a Mac, turn on “Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys” in Keyboard settings) or Win+Alt+A; or open it from a screen corner. Turn on “Open at login” so it’s always one shortcut away.
• What we can’t do: replace the system’s own Launchpad, Start button, Windows key or trackpad gestures (that needs private APIs or always-on keyboard monitoring, which we won’t do). macOS 26’s Apps list can’t make folders or keep your own order — this can.

The layout stays on this computer and is never uploaded.

The top of the sidebar is now a search field (click it to open the launcher), and the bottom shows your avatar, name and Pro badge — click it for your account or to sign out.

AI usage: see how much your coding AI uses

If you code with Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, opencode or GitHub Copilot CLI, the desktop app can read the usage logs those tools already keep on this computer and show how many tokens you use each day and roughly what that would cost at each provider’s API prices (an estimate — subscriptions such as Claude Max or ChatGPT Plus aren’t billed per token).

• Off by default. Turn it on in Settings → “Launcher, Apps & AI usage” → AI usage → “Count AI usage”; each tool has its own switch.
• Numbers only: it reads token counts, tool names and model names — never conversation content, file paths or project names. On this computer it keeps only a hash of each log file’s path and how far it has read.
• You’ll see today, the last 7 and 30 days in tokens and estimated cost, by tool, a 30-day grid and your model mix. You can pause counting or clear the local stats at any time.
• Sync to My data (off by default): daily totals go into the “AI usage” system table (only you can see it by default). Before turning it on, check “What we upload” — real rows of exactly the columns that will be sent: date, tool, model, input / output / cache read / cache write tokens, requests and sessions.
• Once synced you can add a Data tile to your start page or a Connected data card to your personal page (pick the “AI usage” source — only the number you choose becomes public), and your AI can read it via MCP (get_my_series). What widgets and public pages may show is up to you: totals only (default), plus by tool, or plus by model.
• “Delete uploaded data” deletes the AI usage table in My data and turns syncing off; your local stats stay.
• Not supported yet: Cursor (usage lives on Cursor’s servers), Aider (only full chat logs on disk), GitHub Copilot in editors (no local usage records).

Reader: subscribe to and read RSS on your computer

Reader in the sidebar is an RSS reader that runs on your computer: follow lots of sites, blogs and channels and read them in one place. Fetching, storage and search all happen on your computer, not on our servers. Your feeds, articles and read / starred states stay on this computer (use Export OPML to take your feeds to another one).

• Add feeds: click + next to Feeds and paste a website or feed URL (RSS, Atom and JSON Feed that a site announces are found automatically), or pick from Popular sources — GitHub releases, YouTube channels, Reddit, Mastodon, Bluesky, Medium and Substack are the sites’ own official feeds and the most reliable. You can also import an OPML file from another reader.
• RSSHub: sites without RSS (Bilibili, Weibo, Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, X…) can become feeds through RSSHub. Set an instance in Reader settings (for example one you run with Docker at http://127.0.0.1:1200 — “Detect on this computer” finds it). The public rsshub.app is for testing only and is often rate-limited; sources marked “Self-hosted with cookies” or “Often breaks” rarely work on it.
• Reading: three panes — feeds, articles, reading view — with Today, Unread and Starred views and search over titles and text (all on your computer). For feeds that only include a summary, click “Load full article” to extract the article locally; turn on “Always load full articles” for a feed from its right-click menu.
• Keyboard: j / k next / previous, s star, m read / unread, o open original, f full article, / search, r refresh.
• Refreshing: feeds keep refreshing while the app runs in the tray or menu bar (every 30 minutes by default; at most 4 sites at a time, one request per site; failing feeds back off automatically). The tray menu shows your unread count, and the launcher finds articles too.
• Safety and privacy: article content is strictly sanitized (no scripts, embedded frames or forms) and shown in an isolated view; tracking pixels are always blocked, images load without a referrer and can be turned off in settings; local and private network addresses can’t be subscribed (except the RSSHub instance you set).
• Send it elsewhere (only when you click, and only that article): Save to Notion (pick a Notion page shared with WidgetStore; the title, link and text are saved — connect Notion first under Account → Connections), Read later (your start page’s read-later list), and AI summary / AI digest of unread (uses Sparks; you’re shown what is sent first).
• Desktop widget: choose “Pin to desktop” in an article’s Save to… menu to put a Reader widget on your desktop with the latest unread articles (the data stays on your computer).
• Translate: use Translate at the top right of an article — “Translate (quick, free)” has a free daily allowance and “High-quality translation” uses Sparks. Show the original and translation paragraph by paragraph, or the translation only. In settings you can turn on “Translate foreign titles”, and right-click a feed for “Always translate this feed”. Only that article’s text is sent (no images or link addresses), and translations are kept on this computer, so reopening is free.
• WidgetStore What’s New: the first time you open Reader it subscribes to our What’s New RSS in your language. Right-click to remove it if you don’t want it; it’s also in Popular sources.

Screen time

From desktop 1.6, Screen time in the sidebar shows how long you used each app and category (coding, design, browser, chat…) on this computer today and over the last 7 days, and what you used while focusing (for example “while focusing, 85% was coding”).

• Off by default; it only starts when you turn it on. It records only the name of the app in front and for how long — never window titles, URLs or file names, no screenshots, no keystrokes. After a stretch without keyboard or mouse input (5 minutes by default) you count as away. On macOS it needs no Accessibility or Screen Recording permission.
• Data stays on this computer. Pause for an hour, exclude apps or clear your history any time.
• Sync to My data (a separate switch): once an hour, only minutes per category per day go to the “Computer time” table in My data, private by default. You can also include each category's top app names. Delete the uploaded data any time.
• What friends can see (off by default): off / just “focusing” / plus app category (“coding”) / plus app name (“in VS Code”). Only mutual friends (your Messages contacts and people in the same focus room) can see it. The page always shows what friends see right now, the sidebar shows a reminder, and you can pause in one click.
• On Linux it needs X11 with xprop installed; Wayland-only desktops don't say which app is in front, so it can't work there yet.

Pet on the desktop

Settings → My Pet → “Keep it on the desktop” (off by default), or “Pet on the desktop” in the tray menu. Your pet wanders along the bottom of the screen (above the Dock or taskbar) and reacts when you start or finish focusing, when an agent task starts or finishes, and when new articles arrive in Reader; left alone it falls asleep. You can poke it and drag it left or right; clicks anywhere else go straight through to your desktop. Choose its size or turn off “Wander around”.

Notes, Daily SOP and Music

• Notes: in Notes, “More” → “Open a file on this computer” / “Save to this computer” lets you edit .md files on your computer like Typora (saved back to the file, never uploaded); double-clicking a .md file also opens it in the desktop app. Press Ctrl+Alt+N (⌥⌘N on a Mac) for a new note anytime, and the launcher finds your note titles.
• Daily SOP: today’s reminders arrive as system notifications, and while you run an SOP the menu bar / tray shows your progress (for example “Check-in 3/6 · next step”).
• Music: music keeps playing after you close the main window (it stays in the tray), media keys work, and the tray menu shows what’s playing with Play / Pause and Next.

Offline

Offline, the quick panel's focus timer and to-dos keep working and sync when you're back. Desktop widgets show their last content (clocks keep ticking). Web content like your start page needs a connection; you'll see an offline page that recovers automatically.

Settings and updates

Tray / menu bar → Settings…: language, open at login (starts quietly with just the tray and desktop widgets), keep running after closing the window, the global shortcut, grid snapping, and each desktop widget's layer and state.

New versions download in the background; click Restart to update in the sidebar when it suits you. Updates are signed and won't install if the signature doesn't match. You can also Check for updates in Settings.