Google gadgets can be handy on your desktop. For instance, to automatically get notifications about new emails in your Gmail inbox, to quickly add events to your Google calender and to mange your documents on Google Docs.

You might have to navigate through multiple tabs in your browser to keep track of your unread emails and manage your schedule, to-dos and more. Google gadgets make it easy for you to manage your email, calender, weather updates etc., with a nice and elegant dockable sidebar on your desktop.

With a keyboard shortcut, you can auto-hide the sidebar to focus on your active windows. For Ubuntu, you can quickly install Google gadgets by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install google-gadgets

With the fabulous look and feel of the latest version of Ubuntu, Google gadgets will serve as a perfect on your desktop to keep track of status updates, email and a lot more. It’s very easy to install and use, makes your digital life productive.

Now, Here is a catch, you might have to start Google gadgets on every restart, which is not fun/useful? So, here is a quick and easy way to add Google gadgets to your list of startup applications so that ‘Google gadgets’ starts automatically at startup. In order to add Google gadgets to your desktop, as in the following image you need the Command to launch the application. This might vary among different versions of Linux.

An easy way to know the command is, go to Applications -> Internet -> Google gadgets (Meaning that: navigate to Google gadgets in your menu) and right click on it and select ‘Add this launcher to panel’. An applet will be displayed on your desktop, you can view the properties of this applet and use the same to add Google gadgets to startup applications.

Hope this little guide helps you to effectively manage your google gadgets on any linux desktop. Do let us know if you need more nitty-gritty regarding this post.