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

[JColling]

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.

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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.

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

Thanks for posting how to re-enable. After installing EL CAPITAN - I thought they did away with it altogether. I was a bit worried as some of the dashboard apps I use are productivity apps. Anyway, thanks for the post!

 

[Fofer]

I'm really late to this forum, because I only discovered the fact that Dashboard was disabled by default after installing El Capitan. It's a bit of a shame that they've let Dashboard die a slow, ignominious death. I still use it daily for currency conversion and the dictionary/thesaurus. The temperatures are useful to see what conditions are like for other family members or places I will be travelling to. A glance at the stocks in Dashboard is the only time I ever bother looking at them. Shame.

Huh? It's not dead. It's just been disabled as a default. And that happened with Yosemite, not El Capitan. The feature remains alive -- and can be easily re-enabled by opening System Preferences > Mission Control and choosing "As Space" from the Dashboard drop-down menu.

 

[ntheofilos]

Thanks for posting how to re-enable. After installing EL CAPITAN - I thought they did away with it altogether. I was a bit worried as some of the dashboard apps I use are productivity apps. Anyway, thanks for the post!

I don't suppose you know how to get dashboard working again on the Logitech K750 solar keyboard? Prior to installing El Capitan, my F4 key was programmed to open dashboard, which I use every day for work. Now it's not working. I can change it in the system preferences to now open with say F5 or F6, but it will not let me use the F4 key for anything, essentially rendering the F4 key entirely useless.

 

[2499723]

To be fair, pretty much everything you noted can still be done one way or another:

Currency conversion in Spotlight Search:
View attachment 588391

You can right-click to lookup any word (or activate look-up on three-fingers tap in the trackpad settings), look-up through Spotlight Search, or just open the dictionary app.
View attachment 588394 View attachment 588393

And weather and stocks are both available in the notification centre:
View attachment 588395

I personally always found the Dashboard awkward to navigate with a mouse and keyboard interface. I prefer to access all these features separately as they are now. But that's just my opinion.

That was extremely helpful - thanks for spending the time. I guess I have been so entrenched in my Dashboard usage that I hadn't really paid attention to how things moved on. What's nice about the converter in Dashboard, though, is that it's more like a utility. I feel like Spotlight's results are useful, but also a bit messy. That might just be me! Oh, and I NEVER use notifications for the same reason you don't use Dashboard - I find it clunky with keyboard and mouse!

 

[Sill]

To be fair, pretty much everything you noted can still be done one way or another:

Currency conversion in Spotlight Search:
View attachment 588391

How did you get just the currency result to show up? In my Spotlight search for the same term, I get a list of documents and PDFs that I haven't touched in years underneath the desired result. In fact most every Spotlight search I've tried has that kind of result. I'm not too happy about the increase in reliance on Spotlight coming out of Apple these days.

You can right-click to lookup any word (or activate look-up on three-fingers tap in the trackpad settings), look-up through Spotlight Search, or just open the dictionary app.

Good thing you mentioned that. I just tried the three-tap to bring up Dictionary and found it didn't respond. I never used it much in the past but it was nice to know it was there if I did need it. I guess El Capitan must have disabled that tap when I installed it this morning.

 

[Sill]

They can't just remove it, because of Stickies. Removing Stickies = substantial data loss for some people.

Why? I've never used Stickies myself, I could never see the point. Any time I wanted to make an impromptu note I would just open a Text Edit doc that I keep around for that purpose. Its worked well and has lasted since it was a SimpleText document in System 7.5. I can choose to delete or keep whatever part of it I want, and if I need a reminder on my desk I can select the text and drag it to the desktop as a clipping. So what is so great about Stickies that people who use it have so much data saved in it?

 

[rmpbklyn]

Alternatively you can use the following:
yahoo widgets
firefox - many toolbar apps
prism, good for pages, eg many say weather radar, with prism you can specify the page/url and it open in it's ownwindow , better yet on desktop

...poised for retirement. Dashboard was similarly disabled by default on OS X Yosemite....

 

[Shirasaki]

I TBH rarely use dashboard. Main reason is most actions are enough handy to complete using iPhone. Plus Mac OS X spotlight is extremely handy for me to quickly know anything I want to know. I can use it to open any apps installed on Mac, start simple calculation, check translates, check weather. Especially for opening apps, spotlight is much faster than Windows 10 search bar, while later may become unresponsive sometimes.

But yeah. Everyone has their unique workflow and we should show respect to those.

But, I thought this was enabled by default when installing Yosemite while it was Disabled by default?

 

[iamfredrik]

There's a Dashboard icon in Launchpad. Clicking it enables dashboard.

 

[wonderputz]

I need to preface my entire contribution with a disclaimer: I may be completely wrong about my conclusion, but this is what I found on my particular MacBook today. I tried to swipe to the dashboard and nothing happened, as I probably could have expected had I seen this and other similar articles first. However, I had no idea. I didn't actually remember the name Dashboard, so I looked through my applications to see if I could find something that jogged my memory. I saw and clicked Dashboard, it opened, and found everything was as I left it. Only after that did I start researching. When I checked System Preferences, Dashboard was already configured "As Space." I then found that if I opened Mission Control (three-finger swipe up), there are at the top of the screen what I'll call tabs for Desktop and Dashboard. My conclusion is that either Apple moved Dashboard to be a sub-process of Mission control, or the simple act of opening Dashboard through the Application folder reinstated its status as a selectable Space. Am curious to know if anyone new to the problem can confirm or deny that Mission Control includes access to Dashboard.

 

[Micky Do]

My conclusion is that either Apple moved Dashboard to be a sub-process of Mission control, or the simple act of opening Dashboard through the Application folder reinstated its status as a selectable Space. Am curious to know if anyone new to the problem can confirm or deny that Mission Control includes access to Dashboard.

 

[redheeler]

I need to preface my entire contribution with a disclaimer: I may be completely wrong about my conclusion, but this is what I found on my particular MacBook today. I tried to swipe to the dashboard and nothing happened, as I probably could have expected had I seen this and other similar articles first. However, I had no idea. I didn't actually remember the name Dashboard, so I looked through my applications to see if I could find something that jogged my memory. I saw and clicked Dashboard, it opened, and found everything was as I left it. Only after that did I start researching. When I checked System Preferences, Dashboard was already configured "As Space." I then found that if I opened Mission Control (three-finger swipe up), there are at the top of the screen what I'll call tabs for Desktop and Dashboard. My conclusion is that either Apple moved Dashboard to be a sub-process of Mission control, or the simple act of opening Dashboard through the Application folder reinstated its status as a selectable Space. Am curious to know if anyone new to the problem can confirm or deny that Mission Control includes access to Dashboard.

Yes, opening the Dashboard app does re-enable it to display as a Space.

 

[ennio]

Would be a shame to see it go indefinitely as I use this widget daily still View attachment 576287

+1 for the unofficial BBC Radio Widget v4.7

 

[Fofer]

+1 for the unofficial BBC Radio Widget v4.7

Thanks for mentioning that! I just installed it, and am quite impressed with it. It's now on my Dashboard too.

http://www.phantomgorilla.com/widgets/bbcradio/

 

[Stella]

It was a good idea but apple quickly forgot about it, and didn't attempt to improve it.

 

[ennio]

Thanks for mentioning that! I just installed it, and am quite impressed with it. It's now on my Dashboard too.

http://www.phantomgorilla.com/widgets/bbcradio/

If you buy a drink for the developer, you will learn how to change the logos used by the widget

 

[2298754]

My dashboard has been disabled for years. Useless feature

 

[Badagri]

My dashboard has been disabled for years. Useless feature

Many people/developers used it for many years for a useless feature. Before all the handheld toys.

 

[Fofer]

Many STILL use it.

It's far from "useless."

 

[reginaldsnoo]

Another "feature of the dashboard now, is that every time you use it, everything has moved and you have to put it back in the right place. This is the kind of feature Im not keen on myself.
Gotta admit, since the days of 10.4 on an iBook, when I was virtually a Mac crusader, every new OS has brought a greated feeling of indeifference to Apple.
[doublepost=1462893391][/doublepost]

Many people/developers used it for many years for a useless feature. Before all the handheld toys.

I think what you are saying, is YOU have no use for it. It may come as some surprise though, that not everyone else in the universe uses you as a basic reference for their way of ordering their lives ..

 

[Fofer]

Another "feature of the dashboard now, is that every time you use it, everything has moved and you have to put it back in the right place.

Hmmm. Just as a reference point, I use Dashboard daily (in OS X 10.11.4) and the widgets are always in the same position I left them in.

Sometimes an errant click accidentally moves one, but it's easy to move that one back. And the next time I return to the Dashboard view, they are all exactly where I last left them.

 

[Black Magic]

Hmmm. Just as a reference point, I use Dashboard daily (in OS X 10.11.4) and the widgets are always in the same position I left them in.

Sometimes an errant click accidentally moves one, but it's easy to move that one back. And the next time I return to the Dashboard view, they are all exactly where I last left them.

That is my experience as well although I no longer use dashboard.

 

[maverick28]

Maybe too late to this forum (was googling about what happened to newer widgets as well as those that - being so useful like developer widgets - were cached in search results but led to expired pages and stumbled across this discussion) but wanted to chime in just to tell that I use Dashboard extensively I love its look and its skeuomorphic finish, set it up to appear as overlay. Can't imagine doing without it.

 

[casperes1996]

Maybe too late to this forum (was googling about what happened to newer widgets as well as those that - being so useful like developer widgets - were cached in search results but led to expired pages and stumbled across this discussion) but wanted to chime in just to tell that I use Dashboard extensively I love its look and its skeuomorphic finish, set it up to appear as overlay. Can't imagine doing without it.
View attachment 708773

Sure, Dashboard is great! Luckily it's still with us in HS!

 

[Eithanius]

Sure, Dashboard is great! Luckily it's still with us in HS!

Sadly it is somewhat broken since Mavericks...