微软小工具（Microsoft Gadgets），是微软推出的单一功用的小型软件，可创建于桌面上（desktop）或是网页上，依据微软自家的定义，微软小工具可分成三大类：

这些小工具合称Microsoft Gadgets。透过桌面边栏（Sidebar）提供的APIs，程序人员可将自行编写的进程挂接到边栏上面。

Microsoft Gadgets are lightweight single-purpose applications, or software widgets, that can sit on a Microsoft Windows user's computer desktop, or are hosted on a web page. According to Microsoft, it will be possible for the different types of gadgets to run on different environments without modification, but this is currently not the case.