MS removed Gadgets from W8 because of security concerns, supposedly. I suspect it was to promote the tiled apps thing more, though…but I could be wrong.

If you love your gadgets, now there’s a way to get them back…and it’s free.

“Gadgets Revived” adds “Gadgets” to the desktop right click context menu.

It has full control panel integration with working links in the “Appearance and personalization” category.

It also has full integration with Windows Search when “gadgets” is typed in. I don’t know for sure but strongly suspect that it will work with Start8 since it works with Classic Shell and StartIsBack. Apparently you can even integrate it with the online gadget gallery.

Desktop Gadgets apparently has a Gallery of more than 900 Gadgets accessible from its homepage, but to avail yourself of them, you’ll have to download the sidebar which is there on the homepage.

The nice part of this is that there might be a bit of rebirth for gadgets which sort of died when MS/Yahoo killed them.

Let me know if it works with Start8, OK?

Source:

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/gadgets-revived-offers-900-desktop-gadgets-windows-8-1