The Mac’s Dashboard is a great idea: a separate work area where you can store mini-applications called widgets that can do all sorts of wonderful things, from telling you the current weather, news and stock prices through to giving you calculators, translation tools and games.
Jessica Thornsby. Your Mac’s Dashboard hosts a range of mini apps, known as widgets, that are designed to provide you with easy access to important features and information. However, not everyone is a fan of the Dashboard, with some Mac users preferring to disable the Dashboard entirely. I miss Dashboard! I don't understand why dashboard was so unpopular. I used it constantly. I appreciate what this app is trying to do by creating an alternative to the now extinct widgets. However, I do think it needs some work. Mainly, it needs some user customization. I would dearly like to add.
On the whole, it’s nice to have those widgets hidden away on the Dashboard. You can bring them up instantly with F12 (F4 on newer keyboards), and dismiss them all just as easily.
However, sometimes it’s useful to have a widget on your desktop, where you can keep an eye on it. Examples include calculators, clocks, and anything that you need to look at while you’re working. By default, the Mac doesn’t let you put widgets on the desktop, but there are a couple of ways you can work around this.
Free those widgets
One trick is to switch Dashboard into developer mode – the mode that widget developers use to create their widgets. To do this, open a Terminal window (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and type (all on one line):
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES && killall Dock
… then press Return. Your dock should disappear and reappear. Now hit F12 (F4 on newer keyboards) to bring up the Dashboard. To drag a widget onto your desktop, start dragging it in the Dashboard, then hit F12/F4 while dragging to dismiss the Dashboard. Now position the widget on your desktop and release the mouse button. Here’s a BBC Radio widget on my desktop:
To put a widget back on the Dashboard, do the opposite: Start dragging it, hit F12/F4 to bring up the Dashboard, then position it on the Dashboard and let go of the mouse button.
As you might imagine, you can turn off developer mode at any time with:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode NO && killall Dock
If the idea of messing about on the command line doesn’t appeal, there’s a handy widget called DevMode that lets you flip in and out of developer mode at the click of a button. It even shows you what mode you’re currently in.
A nicer way to do it
While this quick hack works, it’s not without its problems. For one thing, any widget you drag onto your desktop now consumes CPU cycles constantly, even when the Dashboard is hidden. Another problem is that the widget is always on top of other windows, so it gets in the way.
While it’s not possible to do much about the CPU thing, there is a neat app available that solves the “always on top” issue. It’s called Amnesty Singles, it costs $10 and it allows you to convert any Dashboard widget to a standalone app so you can run it on your desktop.
In true Mac style, all you do is drag and drop a .wdgt bundle onto the Amnesty window to turn it into an app:
(In case you’re wondering where your currently-installed widgets live, the system widgets are in /Library/Widgets and your user widgets are in ~/Library/Widgets.)
![Add Add](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133948479/100924043.png)
Once you’ve created and saved your widget app, double-click it to launch. It behaves just like a regular app, with an icon in the Dock and a menu bar that lets you do useful things like set an auto-refresh interval, and control whether the app sits on the desktop, behaves like a regular app window, or floats on top:
An even nicer way to do it
Finally, to really go to town with your widgets, check out Amnesty Widget Browser ($20). This installs itself in the menu bar and lets you instantly add any installed widget to your desktop. It has all the features of Amnesty Singles, plus you can do wacky stuff like scale and rotate widgets and make them see-through:
(Not sure how useful a rotated widget is, but a translucent widget is pretty nice!) The app also comes with a selection of bonus widgets for you to play with, including a nice flip clock and the classic “Snake” game. Ahh, widget heaven.
Speaking of bonuses, here’s a bonus widget tip: You can quickly remove a widget from the Dashboard by hovering the mouse cursor over it, then holding down Option and clicking the close button that appears. Neat! https://lionever700.weebly.com/hdmi-to-mac-app.html.
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First introduced with OS X Tiger in 2005, Dashboard organizes Mac widgets — program shortcuts and precursors to apps that we are all more familiar with. Many of these widgets still come as part of the standard package with every Mac and new operating system.
Free Dashboard App
Dashboard is useful to keep close at hand. Mac widgets include contacts (which you can sync with iOS contacts), to calculators, flight trackers to stock market information, the weather app, games, and a wide range of extra tools you can add when you tap the + icon in the lower left of the Apple dashboard.
If you want to take a look at what you can access via the Dashboard, here is the complete list of 1703 Widgets currently available and supported. Now, here is how you use the macOS Dashboard to improve your productivity.
Mac Dashboard shortcuts
Since MacOS Yosemite was launched, Dashboard is something you may have to enable to use. On Macs using an older operating system it is something that automatically sits in the Dock.
To enable Dashboard:
- Mac caffeine app store. Go to System Preferences > Mission Control
- Click the Dashboard pop-up menu
Here it gives you options for how Dashboard appears:
- As Space: Dashboard can inhabit its own area of your Desktop. Get to it when you press the keyboard shortcut for Dashboard, or move between spaces. There are a few other ways you can use space on your Desktop which we will outline below.
- As Overlay: Dashboard occupies a permanent space on your Desktop (which you can switch off via Mission Control).
Now that Dashboard is enabled, there are several ways you can access it (and set shortcut to give you access quicker). Access Dashboard through one of the following shortcuts:
- Use Launchpad > Open > Dashboard.
- Using Siri. Open Siri in the Menu bar and ask “Open Dashboard”, or something similar.
- https://lionever700.weebly.com/old-apps-google-chrome-mac.html. If you have set Dashboard as a space, use a Trackpad to access. Simply swipe right with three fingers.
- In Mission Control Preferences, set a Mouse or keyboard shortcut; then use that to access Dashboard.
Now you can use any of the widgets you need, and add any as needed using the Add button ‘+’ in the lower-left corner of the screen. Remove them using the ‘-‘ minus symbol.
How to use Dashboard as a web monitor
- Go to the website(s) you want to monitor. Choose File > Open in Dashboard.
- The page or website will grey out, opening a purple border around part of the page you want to monitor.
- Now you can adjust the size of the border around the web source.
- Tap ‘Add’ and it will take you to the Dashboard with the source website pulling the information through to your Mac, making a shortcut to a specific website for quicker monitoring.
How to close Dashboard on Mac
When you want to close dashboard, either click anywhere on the screen and the widgets will fade, or press the escape key, or use the mouse, trackpad or keyboard shortcut to close.
Dashboard is also incredibly useful for monitoring website you want to keep an eye on. Whether this is the status of a delivery or recent Amazon order, or a news outlet you read often.
Monitor your Mac with CleanMyMac X
There are always things that would be really useful if you could keep an eye on that don't come in a widget format. Such as your network connection speed and health status of vital functions (disk space, battery, etc.) For those, CleanMyMac X comes with a Menu monitoring feature.
How To Add Apps To Dashboard Mac
The CleanMyMac X Menu comes with the ability to monitor RAM and how full your trash is, so if you experience a performance drop it can quickly isolate and clean the problem. https://lionever700.weebly.com/mac-app-store-mactracker.html. The Menu even shows real-time statuses and health indicators of your hard drive, memory, battery, and CPU. You can also connect your Dropbox to see how much space is remaining. Plus it monitors several other vital functions, keeping your Mac running smoother straight from your status bar.
Download CleanMyMac X (for free).Everyday, CleanMyMac cleans 614TB of data for Mac users, and we have customers scanning and cleaning their Macs in 185 countries. CleanMyMac X comes with dozens of useful and smart features — a powerful app that your Mac needs.