Apple Disables Dashboard by Default in Latest OS X El Capitan Beta

Thursday August 20, 2015 8:05 AM PDT by Joe Rossignol
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
175 comments

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itguy06
58 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.
Rating: 22 Votes
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Soylent Yellow
58 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)
Rating: 12 Votes
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Crosscreek
58 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.
Rating: 7 Votes
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Macrolido
58 months ago
Too bad. I still use Dashboard everyday.
Rating: 6 Votes
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Fofer
52 months ago
Many STILL use it.

It's far from "useless."
Rating: 5 Votes
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skellener
58 months ago

Too bad. I still use Dashboard everyday.

So do I.
Rating: 5 Votes
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itguy06
58 months ago

If they do keep it around the widgets really need to be updated graphically.


No, the Flat, Ugliness needs to go away. Flat screams - I HAVE NO CLUE HOW TO DESIGN ANYTHING!
Rating: 5 Votes
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punkrockid
58 months ago
I don't want it to go, I use multiple widgets everyday:

Organized. For a quick view of my calendars, list of next meetings, clocks of different cities
iStatPro: Real time view of all the important stats of my Mac
TunesText: To view and get lyrics for my music library
Unit Converter: I only have to use this when I visit the USA for non international units :v

Rating: 5 Votes
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cambookpro
58 months ago
iStat, Stickies, Calculator and Unit Converter are widgets I still use daily.

The only one I could perhaps do without is Unit Converter as Spotlight is generally fine for that, but the other three don't yet have alternatives which are better. Calculator is still much more convenient in Dashboard than in Notification Centre.
Rating: 4 Votes
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iBlazed
58 months ago




Yes; I just look out the window next to my desk. I don't need a widget to tell me about the weather.

Is your window a time portal to the future that tells you the weather for the next week? :eek:
Rating: 4 Votes
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