Free Blogger Widgets That Are Safe to Add to Your Sidebar

A sidebar packed with clocks, visitor counters and scrolling tickers looks busy, but it can quietly add two seconds to every page load and, in the worst cases, slip spam links or tracking scripts into your blog. Most free Blogger widgets are fine. A few are risky, and the trouble is that they look exactly the same in the Layout screen.

I customise templates for other bloggers, and the first thing I do on almost every job is remove widgets. This guide covers which built-in gadgets are worth keeping, how to judge a third-party widget before you paste its code, and a short sidebar setup that works on most blogs.

Built-in free Blogger widgets that are safe by default

Blogger calls widgets "gadgets," and you add them from Layout, then "Add a Gadget" in any section of your template. Every gadget in that official list is hosted and maintained by Blogger itself, so it carries no risk of hidden code. These are the ones I use most often:

• Search Box. Lightweight and useful once you pass 30 or so posts.
• Popular Posts. Shows your most viewed posts over the last 7 days, 30 days or all time. Set it to 30 days and 4 or 5 posts with thumbnails turned off if speed matters.
• Labels. Displays your categories. Use the list view rather than the cloud if you have more than 15 labels, since clouds get hard to read.
• Featured Post. Pins one post to the top of the sidebar or main area. Good for a start-here guide.
• Contact Form. Simple and free, though delivery depends on your settings. See our guide to a free contact form for Blogger that actually delivers mail if messages go missing.
• Profile. A short author box. Keep the text to two or three lines.
• Blog Archive. Optional. Readers rarely use it on topic-based blogs, but it helps news-style or diary blogs.

Two built-in gadgets need care. "Follow by Email" lost its delivery service when FeedBurner email subscriptions ended in 2021, so on many templates it now collects addresses that never receive anything. Remove it. And the "HTML/JavaScript" gadget is safe in itself but runs any code you paste, which is where problems start.

How to check a third-party widget before adding it

Third-party widgets arrive as a block of code you paste into an HTML/JavaScript gadget. Before you do, spend five minutes on these checks.

Read the code, even if you cannot write it

Open the code in a plain text editor and look for three things. First, any script tag that loads a file from a domain you do not recognise. Second, any link pointing to a site unrelated to the widget, often hidden inside a "powered by" line or styled to be invisible. Third, long strings of random looking letters, which usually means the code is obfuscated to hide what it does. If you see the third, do not use it.

Check who hosts it and how long it has existed

A widget that loads its script from someone else's server depends on that server forever. If the site goes offline, your widget breaks, and if the domain is sold, the new owner can change what loads on your blog. Prefer widgets where the full code sits inside the gadget itself, with no external script.

Test the speed cost

Run your homepage through a page speed test before adding the widget, then again after. If the score drops by more than 5 points, or total page weight grows by more than 100 KB, the widget is not worth it. Our article on free fonts and icons that do not slow down your site uses the same before and after method.

Widgets to avoid entirely

Some widget types cause trouble so often that I remove them on sight:

1. Visitor counters and "who is online" boxes from free counter sites. Many add tracking cookies and outbound links, and the numbers they show do little for readers.
2. Free chat boxes and shoutboxes. Most are abandoned projects, and open ones attract spam within weeks.
3. Snowfall, cursor trails and falling leaves. They run animation scripts continuously and drain battery on phones.
4. Auto-playing music or video players. Readers close the tab.
5. Any widget that requires removing a credit link to work properly, or that breaks when you try. That link is often the real purpose of the widget.

The same caution applies to templates themselves, as covered in where to find free templates that are not actually malware. Widget code and template code carry the same risks.

More widgets do not mean more engagement

A lot of blogging advice says to fill the sidebar with "engagement" widgets: recent comments, related posts, social counters, subscriber boxes, tag clouds, archives and a calendar. The theory is that more options keep readers clicking.

In practice, the opposite tends to happen. More than half of Blogger traffic on most blogs I work on is from phones, and on a phone the sidebar drops below the post. A reader has to scroll past the whole article and the comments to reach it. Every widget there still loads, though, so the page gets slower for a feature almost nobody sees.

On desktop, a crowded sidebar competes with your post for attention. When I trimmed one client's sidebar from eleven gadgets to four, average time on page went up, not down, and page load time fell from about 4.1 seconds to 2.3. Readers clicked the remaining links more because there were fewer of them.

Pick widgets that answer a reader's next question: "what else is here?" (search, labels), "what is good?" (popular or featured posts), and "who wrote this?" (profile). Skip the rest.

A simple sidebar setup that works

For most blogs, this order covers the essentials without slowing anything down:

1. Search Box
2. Featured Post or a short Profile
3. Popular Posts, last 30 days, 5 posts
4. Labels, as a list, sorted by frequency

Put the Contact Form on its own page rather than the sidebar. Put social links in the header or footer, where readers expect them. Then save, open your blog on a phone, and scroll to the bottom to see what mobile readers actually get.

Frequently asked questions

Are free Blogger widgets safe to use?

The gadgets in Blogger's own "Add a Gadget" list are safe because Blogger hosts them. Third-party widgets pasted into an HTML/JavaScript gadget can carry hidden links or slow scripts, so read the code and test page speed before keeping one.

How many widgets should a Blogger sidebar have?

Four to six is enough for most blogs. Beyond that, each extra widget adds load time while getting fewer clicks. Mobile readers often never see the sidebar at all.

How do I remove a widget from Blogger?

Go to Layout in your dashboard, click the pencil icon on the gadget, and choose Remove at the bottom of the settings window. Save the layout. If a gadget is locked by the template, you may need to edit the theme HTML or switch to a cleaner template.