If you had a Notion widget embedded from WidgetBox, it stopped working on 24 December 2025, when the service shut down and its domain stopped resolving. This guide explains what happened and matches each widget type WidgetBox offered to a free replacement, most of them from Dearly Peculiar.
What happened to WidgetBox
WidgetBox was a free Notion widget site. It shut down on 24 December 2025, and its domain no longer resolves, so any widget embedded from it now shows a blank frame or a broken link inside Notion. There has been no public announcement of it returning, and we have nothing further to add beyond that date and that fact.
This is one reason I keep the underlying information, such as dates, tasks and reading lists, inside Notion itself rather than only in a widget. The widget can disappear without taking the source record with it.
Find a replacement for each WidgetBox widget type
Match the widget type you used to what is below. Every link goes straight to that widget's customise page, where you can preview it and copy the free embed link.
| WidgetBox widget | Dearly Peculiar replacement | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Clock | Soft Clock | A live analog clock with ticks, numerals, roman or minimal faces, plus an optional digital time and date. |
| Calendar | Marked Month | A month grid where you tap any day to mark it with a coloured dot, with a legend so each colour is clear. |
| Weather | Weather | Search your city for the temperature, the sky today, and a three-day look ahead. |
| Countdown | Countdown | Set a date and a name, and watch the days fall away, with soft confetti the day it arrives. |
| Timer / pomodoro | Focus Timer | A tidy focus timer with custom presets and automatic breaks. |
| Life / year progress | Life in Weeks | Your life as a grid of weeks, filled up to today. A quiet way to see the time you have. |
| Quotes | Daily Whisper | One soft line a day, the same all day. Swap in your own lines whenever you like. |
| Reactions / like buttons | No direct replacement yet | We do not have a like or reaction widget yet. Indify is worth checking if you need one now. |
| View counters | No direct replacement yet | We do not have a public view-counter widget yet. Indify is worth checking if you need one now. |
Widgets that track a whole year, such as Marked Month, sit alongside Year in Bloom, which shows the year itself filling up rather than marking individual dates. Try both and keep whichever one you read at a glance.
How to swap a broken WidgetBox embed
- Open the matching widget's customise page from the table above and copy its free embed link, or buy customisation for £3 if you want your own colours and settings.
- In Notion, click the dead WidgetBox embed block and delete it.
- On a new line, type
/embed, choose Embed, and paste the new widget's link. - Resize the block to roughly the space the old widget used.
- Refresh the page once to confirm the new widget loads and holds its settings.
If the widget still appears as a link card rather than an interactive embed, choose Embed rather than Mention, Bookmark or Paste as link when Notion offers those options. The full embedding guide covers that fix in more detail.
What doesn't have a replacement yet
We do not have a direct replacement for WidgetBox's reactions or like buttons, or for a public view counter. If one of those was the main reason you used WidgetBox, Indify is another option worth checking; see the FAQ below for what its free plan covers.
Frequently asked questions
Is WidgetBox coming back?
There is no public announcement of a return. WidgetBox's own domain no longer resolves, so treat any WidgetBox embed still on your page as gone rather than temporarily down.
Why did my WidgetBox embeds stop working?
WidgetBox shut down on 24 December 2025 and its domain stopped resolving. Any Notion embed block pointing at a WidgetBox URL now shows a blank frame or a broken link, because the page it was loading no longer exists.
Is Indify free?
Indify has a free plan, but it caps you at six active widgets and needs an account. Its paid tiers remove that limit. We cannot speak to any pricing changes beyond what Indify lists publicly.
Are Dearly Peculiar widgets free?
A free Dearly Peculiar account embeds up to three different widgets, and one of them can be fully customised at no cost. Customising more than that costs £3 per widget, once, with no subscription required unless you want the whole collection.
Can I keep my old WidgetBox layout?
The block itself needs replacing, but the position, size and column it sat in can stay the same. Delete the dead embed, add a new one with /embed, and resize it to roughly the space the old widget used.