Making widgets appear/disappear with click on desktop

After having given up on this, I finally and surprisingly got the desired behavior back. It turns out that while you may not be able to make the widgets disappear with a desktop click, you can make them appear (and then toggle with clicks from there). I was watching a couple of the videos that came up when I searched YouTube on <toggle widgets desktop sequoia>, found nothing that helped, looked despondently at my desktop with the lovely Sequoia wallpaper substitute somebody recommended regrettably covered up on the left by my column of widgets, and decided just not to display the widgets on the desktop, figuring maybe there would be some way (if not F6) to display them when I wanted them. So I went to System Settings and deactivated "Show Widgets On Desktop". Then I had the mostly unobstructed wallpaper back again, and when I clicked on it... there were the widgets! And they disappeared when I clicked again! So this turned out to be the way to do what I wanted: just uncheck "On Desktop".

[Edited by Moderator]

Thanks. I guess I may have to regrettably give up on regaining this lost ability, then (which may already have been gone in later versions of Sonoma – I don't know). But now I'm having trouble restoring normal behavior even being stuck with not being able to toggle the widgets with a desktop click. It seems crazy. Right now, I'm typing this in Brave Browser. If I click on the desktop, my Brave windows disappear... but I'm still in Brave! If I click on it again, my Brave windows come back... but I'm in the Finder! I imagine this is owing to some twisted configuration of confusing features I basically don't want and don't feel that I need: Stage Manager, Spaces, Control Center, whatever. I would like to be able to make the widgets appear and disappear by clicking on the desktop as I could before. But failing that, I would like to at least be able to restore the normal behavior that I've always had before (since 1988): namely, that clicking on the desktop simply takes me to the Finder without disappearing my app windows. Can someone tell me how to get that back?

Disabling Stage Manager would seem to be a good idea, except I already have it disabled. I shut down and rebooted, and now (for whatever reason) it's not doing what it did before when I clicked on the desktop from an app and it disappeared my app windows but stayed in the app, and on a further click restored my app windows but switched to the Finder – so odd. Now it's switching to the Finder and staying there on further clicks, but every click appears/disappears the app windows. What I wanted and would still like to have, as I said initially, is for the desktop click to appear/disappear the widgets (just the widgets), and I'm not at all sure that I want it appearing/disappearing my app windows, though I may have to adapt to this if it's being forced on me in Sequoia. But I don't know that it is and I'm confused. Is anyone aware of a way to stop desktop clicks from appearing/disappearing the app windows? Thanks.

This indeed gets it to stop appearing/disappearing the app windows, thanks. Now, however, I'm wondering whether I might not want this behavior after all, particularly since I have my Keyboard Maestro macro that switches to the Finder afterwards simulate the ⌥⌘H keystroke to hide the app windows. I can imagine that the ability to toggle the widgets may have been sacrificed to enable this. So, uh, I'm leaving it on for the time being. Thanks again.

The F6 key doesn't toggle widgets for me either (different Mac? different system?), but thanks anyway because this brought F3 to my attention, which toggles Mission Control. I've never used this, but it looks handy and I think I will now.