Custom widgets - letsfindaway/OpenBoard GitHub Wiki
Besides the built-in applications and interactivities, there are quite some useful widgets provided by the community. These widgets can be installed in OpenBoard and used just like the built-in widgets.
I have found the following sources for OpenBoard widgets. Please tell me if you find another one!
Widgets are provided for download as a zip archive.
OpenBoard looks for widgets in two locations:
- In a location within the application installation folder.
- In a location within the user data folder.
Unfortunately the first two web sites linked above describe the first approach. But this has several drawbacks and is not recommended. It is much better and easier to install it in the user data folder. The advantages are:
- It does not require
rootor administrator privileges. - Widgets are kept when OpenBoard is updated.
- On Linux, the folder location is the same, no matter whether the official package is installed, some package from a distribution or a Flatpak package.
The location is a folder called interactive content (lowercase, with space) in the application data folder. This folder is at the following location:
- Windows:
C:/Users/<USER>/AppData/Local/OpenBoard/interactive content - MacOS:
~/Library/Application Support/OpenBoard/interactive content - Linux:
~/.local/share/OpenBoard/interactive content
If this folder does not exist, create it. Then unpack the zip archive of the widget in this folder or any subfolder. The widget or the subfolder will then appear in the OpenBoard Application palette.
Currently (October 2023) the web pages linked above offer widgets for OpenBoard up to version 1.6.4. The new version 1.7.x is based on a completely different web rendering engine. This affects the way how widgets interact with OpenBoard and in most cases requires an adaption of the widget. If a widget you want to use does not work with OpenBoard 1.7.0, please contact the widget author and ask for an update.