iPhone – ‘OldOS’ developer launches new website that gives classic macOS widgets a new life

The same developer behind the now incredibly popular “OldOS” TestFlight app for iPhone, Zane Kleinberg, is back with a new tool that lets you use classic macOS widgets through a web browser. Kleinberg explained how classic macOS widgets, first introduced in Tiger, were made entirely out of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This enabled him to revive several old Apple-designed widgets, including calculator, world clock, unit converter, stickies, and the tile puzzle.

Kleinberg’s new website is best used through a desktop browser on a Mac or iPad, but it also works on iPhone. When using the site on iPhone, the widgets will stack vertically rather than horizontally.

All of the widgets work just as you’d expect them to. In fact, they are exactly the same widgets Apple used to ship with macOS. Their web-based architecture means that some of them are still live to this day, and Zane’s website is just designed to surface them again. You can still flip them around to change settings like the color of a sticky note or the city of the world clock. Sadly, the site is limited just to the few widgets that Zane was able to pull. Hopefully, we’ll be able to someday add our own to the site to try old third-party Dashboard widgets.

For those of you who miss Dashboard, this is a nostalgic trip. Apple removed Dashboard from macOS when they released Catalina in 2019. Big Sur introduced a new design for widgets and placed them in a grid view that slides out of the right side of the screen. The current iteration of macOS widgets isn’t nearly as interactive as Dashboard was, so if you’ve been aching for the old days when widgets were all the rage, you should check out Zane’s newest creation.

Zane also updated OldOS recently with the ability to set a custom wallpaper. The latest version also includes the old battery Lock Screen design when you are charging your iPhone. If you already have OldOS on your iPhone, you can head over to TestFlight to update the app. If you don’t already have OldOS, keep an eye on Zane’s Twitter for new TestFlight links.

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