Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now.
On today's episode let's look at how to get rid of the Dashboard.
So I love the Dashboard.
I love Dashboard widgets.
I love the idea of having these cool little apps you can easily get to that can do these
tiny little tasks.
But, in reality I never use them, never.
Like year after year I've never used them once.
As a matter of fact the only time I ever see the Dashboard is when I accidentally bring
it onto the screen by hitting the wrong key on the keyboard or a gesture on my trackpad.
It kinda of makes sense that I have to give it up and just get rid of the Dashboard.
Before we completely get rid of the Dashboard let's look at some lesser measures we can
take.
If we go into System Preferences there are some things we can turn off that make it easier
to deal with.
For instance, if we go into Mission Control we can turn off Show Dashboard as a space.
Now with it turned on as a space I can very easily use three fingers on my trackpad to
move over and see the Dashboard and three fingers to go back.
I can also use this keyboard shortcut here, F12, to do it and bring it up.
So I can disable both of these very easily and now I no longer accidentally see it.
I can't go over there and hitting F12 doesn't do anything except generate a beep.
So that kind of solves my problem.
What it doesn't completely solve is getting rid of the Dashboard itself.
If I go into Mission Control I see that it is not there because it is no longer a space
and there is no way for me to bring it up but I can still bring up Dashboard using the
Dock item here at the bottom.
So I can still get to it which is kind of nice.
Now all of these are tiny little web applets and the thing about them is that all use a
little bit of CPU power.
Some people complain that they use a lot of CPU power.
I don't see it.
I use my Mac for tons of stuff and I kind of ignore the Dashboard and I don't really
see these taking up much.
But if you never use them then it may be worthwhile getting rid of them.
One simple thing you can do is to hit the minus button here at the bottom and simply
remove ones that you don't need.
As a matter of fact you can just remove them all and then they won't be running.
Then Dashboard really shouldn't be using any CPU power once you get rid of all of the widgets
and then you can kind of leave it at that.
But there is a more extreme measure you can take.
You can use a terminal command to actually disable the Dashboard so it is not even running.
So the terminal command isn't too long of one.
I'll put it there but I will also put is in the show notes on this page at MacMost.com
so you can just copy and paste.
When you execute this single line here it basically changes a preference saying to not
launch Dashboard at all.
Now nothing is going to immediately happen because Dashboard is part of the Dock and
the Dock is still running so it just has a preference to not launch Dashboard next time.
You can force it to go away right now by using "killall Dock" and now you can see it kind
of restarts the Desktop and the Dock there and now even if I tap on this icon here in
the Dock nothing will happen because Dashboard is gone.
So I could actually at this point just lift up the Dashboard icon and get it out of the
Dock and that removes everything.
It is not here.
There is no keyboard shortcuts for it.
There is no gesture for it and it is actually not running.
If you are to just jump right to doing this I would still go into Preferences and disable
the keyboard shortcut and disable its presence in Mission Control just to make sure.
Just to be clean so that it is not trying to active the Dashboard even though it is
not there.
Oh, and after doing this if you decide that you do want the Dock Dashboard back you can
go over to this and use NO rather than YES and then do killall Dock again and it changes
the preference back to NO don't disable the Dashboard and when you restart the Dock it
is back.
I think one of the reasons that Dashboard is less relevant today than it was when it
was first introduced is because of the iPhone and the iPad.
A lot of users have smart phones right with them that have apps that kind of take the
place of the things that are on Dashboard.
You want a quick calculator, you want to look at the news really quick, something like that
you can do it with your mobile device so there is no need to interrupt what you are doing
on your computer, just use the app on your iPhone.
So I hope you found this useful.
Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.