When you buy through affiliate links in our content, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn What Does Desk Accessory Mean?
A desk accessory is a small application to be run in a
desktop environment to help users with some task. Desk accessories were more
common in environments that had limited multitasking, but have become less
important as modern systems have preemptive multitasking. Desk accessories
still exist in some form on modern systems.
Techopedia Explains Desk Accessory
Desk accessories are small programs that perform some task,
such as a calculator or a notepad. Desk accessories were particularly
prominent on earlier desktops because they lacked good multitasking
capabilities. The Classic Mac OS was one of them, since it was only with Mac OS
X that Apple’s operating system achieved true preemptive multitasking. The Mac
OS Control Panel, Chooser and Scrapbook were all implemented as desk
accessories. When System 7 appeared, since it had cooperative multitasking,
developers were encouraged to write small applications. The macOS Dashboard
also allows developers to create small applications called widgets.
