Apple Confirms Dashboard is Going Away After 14 Years

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Apple has removed Dashboard support from WebKit, not long after it was discovered that the feature has been completely dropped in macOS Catalina, according to a changelog spotted by Japanese blog Mac Otakara.

goodbye dashboard
While this news is not entirely surprising, it eliminates any slim hope that Dashboard might have returned in a future beta of macOS Catalina. The feature has already been disabled by default since OS X Yosemite, but it can still be manually enabled within Mission Control in System Preferences as of macOS Mojave.

Dashboard, first introduced in OS X Tiger in 2005, was effectively a secondary desktop on the Mac that housed a variety of customizable widgets, ranging from sticky notes and the weather forecast to a clock and a calculator. These ‌widgets‌ have relied on Safari's open source WebKit engine for rendering.

Dashboard appears to remain functional in macOS Mojave for now, although it is clearly a legacy feature and some ‌widgets‌ do not work. After over 14 years, the feature is about to ride off into the sunset for good.

Related Roundup: macOS Catalina
Tags: Dashboard, WebKit

Top Rated Comments

macpro2000 Avatar
macpro2000
23 months ago
It’s a useful resource. I still use it all the time.
Score: 59 Votes (Like | Disagree)
2010mini Avatar
2010mini
23 months ago
Honestly I forgot it was even still there.
Score: 54 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AngerDanger Avatar
AngerDanger
23 months ago
Steve demoing Dashboard for the first time in 2005.

It's kind of odd to think that it was a precursor to Steve's iPhone vision. Originally, he intended for the iPhone to run web-apps rather than have an App Store, and Dashboard was a collection of glossy, skeuomorphic, web-apps with rounded rectangular icons and charming-but-cheesy animations.

Two years before we had this:



Attachment Image

Attachment Image
Score: 45 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MacFather Avatar
MacFather
23 months ago
Deleted.
Score: 42 Votes (Like | Disagree)
chrisbicker Avatar
chrisbicker
23 months ago
Now just waiting to get rid go Launchpad
Score: 33 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cashxx Avatar
cashxx
23 months ago
Very sad! I use it multiple times a day to quickly check on stocks, weathers, packages at a click of a side button on my mouse to have it slide in as an overlay and back out in seconds. Will be something that may make me hold back updating along with the quick editing features of QuickTime 7.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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