by on June 29, 2010 Leave a Comment

Dashboard Keeps Information at Your Fingertips

Dashboard is an application that is used to display mini applications known as widgets. Think of these widgets as little helpers that provide you information at the push of a button.

The Dashboard program runs at system startup and is hidden in the background until you activate it. When you do, the desktop dims and the widgets float into view on top of the applications. OS X comes with some default widgets for displaying the time, calendar, control iTunes, the Weather, sports scores, etc. In addition, 3rd party developers also make widgets that you can download and install into your system.

You can typically invoke the Dashboard in three ways:

  • Key press – pressing F4 on your Mac keypard, or F12 if you are using a Macbook
  • Clicking the Dashboard Dock icon
  • Moving the mouse to a corner of your desktop. This only works if you have setup the System preferences to allow it.

You can move a widget by clicking it and dragging it around the desktop.

You can close a widget by pressing the Option key and moving the mouse over the widget. When you do, an X will appear. Click it and the widget goes away.

by on June 29, 2010 2 Comments

Lock Dashboard Widgets To Desktop

I like the Dashboard. It enables me to keep at a keypress alot of useful utilties. My favorite Dashboard widget right now is the Tempo time logging widget. There are times that pressing F12 is a bit too inconvenient. I sometimes want to leave a Dashboard widget on the desktop so I can always see it. Oddly, OS X doesn’t give you an easy way to make Dashboard widgets stick to the desktop.

Not to be deterred, I did some poking around and found a neat trick to allow you to do this. Before we begin, you must be comfortable using the Mac Terminal application.

  1. Open Terminal (Application->Utilities->Terminal)
  2. Type defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
  3. Type killall Dock

Your Dock will disappear for a few seconds and then reappear. Once it does, you can move Dashboard widgets onto the Desktop.

  1. Press F12 to display the Dashboard
  2. Pick a widget and hold down the mouse button
  3. Press F12 again

You’ll see the widget now is on the desktop. You can stick it wherever you want. You can put the widget back into the Dashboard by clicking it first, pressing F12, then releasing the mouse.

If you want to go back to the defaults, do this:

  1. Open Terminal (Application->Utilities->Terminal)
  2. Type defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode NO
  3. Type killall Dock

Pretty handy trick eh? If you have any other interesting OS X hacks, please let us know in the comments.

by on October 26, 2009 Leave a Comment

How to remove the Dashboard from the Dock

Your Dock is premium real estate on your Mac OSX Desktop. You should generally keep applications that you use everyday in your Dock for quick access.

The Dock comes configured with a few applications including the Dashboard. The Dashboard is already accessible via a shortcut key so placing it in the Dock might seem wasteful to some people. You can remove the Dashboad from the Dock by either control clicking the icon or by right clicking the icon and selecting remove from dock. This doesn’t disable the Dashboard, it just removes it from the Dock, to free up more space. Check out the demonstration video.