Xbox Game Bar Update Gets a Widget Store, New Widgets

Delivering on its promise to bring extensibility to the Xbox Game Bar, Microsoft has added support for a store and third-party widgets.

“PC gaming is all about choice and customization, over the past year we’ve rolled out Xbox Game Bar updates focused on that,” Microsoft’s Eric Hamilton and Kripal Kavi write in the announcement post. “We’re working to give PC gamers greater control of their gaming experience from within Game Bar, and that’s why today we’re announcing a new round of updates.”

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Those updates are fairly profound: For the first time, Microsoft is allowing third-parties to extend the capabilities of the Xbox Game Bar via add-ons called widgets. And it is allowing those third-parties to make their widgets available via the new Game Bar Widget Store.

“The Game Bar Widget Store not only includes brand-new widgets from XSplit, Razer and Corsair, but also one of the first-ever independently developed widgets built for Destiny 2, [called Ghost]” Hamilton and Kavi added.

Developers interested in adding widgets to the Xbox Game Bar can get started with the Game Bar SDK developer hub.

Additionally, Microsoft is announcing some other new Xbox Game Bar capabilities, including the ability to configure whether mouse clicks over a pinned widget should go to the widget or through to your game, and support for transparency.

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Conversation 3 comments

  • red77star

    01 July, 2020 - 11:41 am

    <p>Actually this is good idea to add things showing CPU/GPU Temperature, fan speeds and such.</p>

  • omen_20

    02 July, 2020 - 2:37 pm

    <p>Would really like to see Microsoft pull in Sticky Notes, Windows Terminal, and To Do as well as allow for the chat widget to be federated between Xbox, Skype, and Teams. I think Game Bar could be multipurposed for productivity. There's no reason to have to switch virtual desktops to see sticky notes or your terminal.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      03 July, 2020 - 9:00 am

      It’s like Teams for gamers! 🙂

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