Windows Gadget

File Format
Name	Windows Gadget
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Archiving Windows Gadget
Extension(s)	.gadget
MIME Type(s)	application/x-windows-gadget
Developed By	Microsoft
Released	2007

A Windows Gadget file, also known as a Windows Sidebar Gadget, is the format used to distribute gadgets used by the Windows Sidebar, available in Windows Vista, then renamed Windows Gadget Platform in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.

It is either a ZIP or CAB archive which always contains a manifest describing the gadget, named gadget.xml. The archive also contains HTML, CSS, JavaScript files that power the gadget, as it is not much more than a web page with some extra ActiveX APIs.

Gadgets are installed (extracted) under two directories:

• %SYSTEMROOT%\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets (all users)
• %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets (only this user)

Because the APIs allow, among many other things, arbitrary command execution through System.Shell.execute, Microsoft published a security advisory in 2012 that recommends disabling gadgets entirely.

Links

• Windows Gadget Platform documentation
• Windows Sidebar documentation