Apple has quietly disabled Dashboard by default in the seventh beta of OS X El Capitan, an unsurprising move given the ten-year-old widget feature on Mac has not been updated in over four years and looks increasingly poised for retirement. Dashboard was similarly disabled by default on OS X Yosemite.

Dashboard

While a few websites claim that Apple has removed Dashboard from OS X El Capitan entirely, the feature can be re-enabled by opening System Preferences > Mission Control and choosing "As Space" from the Dashboard drop-down menu. Then, tap on the Dashboard key on your keyboard to bring up the window.

Dashboard was introduced on OS X Tiger in 2005 and acts as a secondary desktop for widgets such as a calculator, calendar, clock, weather, stocks, sticky notes, mini games, dictionary, flight tracker and more. Widgets can be added or removed from Dashboard by clicking on the plus or minus buttons in the bottom-left corner.

Tags: Dashboard, Mission Control, System Preferences
Related Forum: OS X El Capitan

Top Rated Comments

itguy06 Avatar
itguy06
125 months ago
Shame they are doing this. It was and is an awesome place for seldom used but needed "NOW" things. I still use it frequently. Especially the calculator. Spotlight's calculator, well, sucks.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Soylent Yellow Avatar
Soylent Yellow
125 months ago
Would be a shame to see it go indefinitely as I use this widget daily still :(
Still use daily:

* Local rain radar (I take the bicycle to the station)
* Train departure times
* Local time of all the countries we do business with
* Weather of all the countries we do business with
* Translation widget
* Snippet with our address and telephone number (moved too many times to remember that reliably)

Quite handy to have all this available on the touch of a button (F12 or CTRL-left arrow)
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Crosscreek Avatar
Crosscreek
125 months ago
Noticed that when I updated. I know a lot of people don't use it but I keep a weather radar running at all times. Storms all the time where I live so it comes in handy to hit a hot corner to take a look.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Macrolido Avatar
Macrolido
125 months ago
Too bad. I still use Dashboard everyday.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Fofer Avatar
Fofer
119 months ago
Many STILL use it.

It's far from "useless."
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
skellener Avatar
skellener
125 months ago
Too bad. I still use Dashboard everyday.
So do I.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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