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

ignatius345 said:
That sounds more like modernizing Dashboard to me, but either way, Notification Center as it stands now is a terrible substitute. Let's just hope that if they DO kill Dashboard, someone comes up with a good 3rd-party replacement.
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Yep! Killing three birds with one stone. Modernizing dashboard, updating Notification Center and unifying design language between operating systems. Simple and effective and not crammed into the sidebar on a giant widescreen display. Too bad I don't work at Apple. Heck, they could probably just combine it with Launch Pad and make it the first page with the search at the top. I rarely click an icon anyway and just start typing. Or at the least they could make it a screen to the left like the home screen in iOS 9. Why not unity spotlight there too…am I going too far? Haha. Lots of simplification could happen that would actually make it easier and faster to use.
 
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I'd say it's about time they put this Dashboard widget thing out of its misery. Widgets seem to be going the route of Notification Center these days. Plus 98% of the Dashboard widgets available are ugly and/or crappy, outdated and/or buggy. I've tried several times to make it productive and efficient and it just didn't work out for me. Perhaps it was a decent idea worth an attempt, or perhaps it was just a bad idea from the onset.
 
Wow, interesting to see so much Dashboard love! I might suggest that the people who are afraid it's going away turn on "send diagnostic and usage data to Apple". That's really the best way they have of knowing that a feature is utilized.

I liked Dashboard when it was first released, but over time I just never got in the habit of using it. I finally turned it off when I realized the only time I used it was when I flipped t the Dashboard space by accident...

Is the widget repository still active?
 
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Now hopefully developers will work more on Notification Center widgets. OS X 's NC hasn't gotten as much love as iOS 's
 
SandboxGeneral said:
I updated this morning and it wasn't disabled for me. I set mine to be viewed as an Overlay and after the update it was reset to Space.
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So wait, you still have the option of viewing Dashboard as an overlay in 10.11 El Capitan, correct? I didn't want to misinterpret and come to the conclusion that you can only have Dashboard in its own space now.

I still use Dashboard near daily (in overlay form) so I definitely wouldn't want this feature dipping out just yet.
 
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This is not new, something similar was done with Yosemite. It's simply Apple's attempt to get users and developers to move to Notification Center instead.

Chances are Dashboard will be gone from clean installs of 10.12. This is sad because it can still do a lot of things, like display a part of a webpage without having to go to it in the browser, that Notification Center can't.

kinless said:
So wait, you still have the option of viewing Dashboard as an overlay in 10.11 El Capitan, correct? I didn't want to misinterpret and come to the conclusion that you can only have Dashboard in its own space now.

I still use Dashboard near daily (in overlay form) so I definitely wouldn't want this feature dipping out just yet.
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Yes, the overlay setting is still there.
 
Dashboard was awesome when it came out in Tiger. It makes sense to start moving away from it as it doesn't seem as useful now adays. I have good memories of making widgets in Dashcode. Dashboard started losing steam around Snow Leopard time-frame though.
 
Dashboard had been disabled by default on a clean install on Yosemite as well, this is not new.

test it yourself if you're on Yosemite - make a new account and notice its off.
 
Not sure why this is front page news. My 2015 MacBook Pro came with OS X Yosemite and had Dashboard disabled by default as well.
 
kinless said:
So wait, you still have the option of viewing Dashboard as an overlay in 10.11 El Capitan, correct? I didn't want to misinterpret and come to the conclusion that you can only have Dashboard in its own space now.

I still use Dashboard near daily (in overlay form) so I definitely wouldn't want this feature dipping out just yet.
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Yes. After the update from yesterday, OS X changed my setting from overlay to space. Then I put it back to overlay, the way I prefer to use it.
 
DataChris said:
WTF losing dashboard would be a complete fail!! I use it 100 times a day to check weather, time, date, etc. It's one keyboard button perfect data access! Sliding widget filled sidebars or multiple spaces are a sad excuse for a dashboard replacement.
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You can find substitute widgets for notification center and set a keyboard shortcut to open it. I know it's not what you want but I think it is close.
 
I used to use Dashboard daily on my work computer, and had it perfectly set up and organized to help me out and make life easier.

That was 4 or 5 years ago though, and my usage of it drastically dropped off once I got an iPhone. Don't know why I started using my phone to do all the things that I used to use Dashboard for, t just sort of evolved that way.

I wouldn't want to see it go though, even if I seldom use it anymore. Perhaps Apple can consider updating it, maybe giving it a "Proactive" function similar to iOS9? Not sure how well this would work out, but it could be interesting and useful (assuming Siri ever comes to OSX).
 
crizzly said:
Dashboard was awesome when it came out in Tiger. It makes sense to start moving away from it as it doesn't seem as useful now adays. I have good memories of making widgets in Dashcode. Dashboard started losing steam around Snow Leopard time-frame though.
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It only "started losing steam" because Apple turned it into a neglected stepchild. Why, for instance, don't we have the ability to run iOS apps in Dashboard?
 
Apple can fairly easily measure to see if these things are used. If they're disabling it chances are good that few are using it and disabling it means better usability and less resource usage.

ignatius345 said:
It only "started losing steam" because Apple turned it into a neglected stepchild. Why, for instance, don't we have the ability to run iOS apps in Dashboard?
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The dashboard would be a silly place to run them. A feature like allowing iOS apps to run on OS X wouldn't be relegated to a little used area of the OS. It would be far harder to interact with those apps and others if they stuck them in the dashboard.
 
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While I don't use Dashboard, I also don't like Notification Center. I like the spatial organization of Dashboard much more than the linear organization of NC.

I don't know why Dashboard never caught on with me. Maybe it's that the little widgets are underpowered and seemed to fall over frequently, or maybe it was because I usually have multiple displays available so I can keep more stuff open...
macintologist said:
I'm sure someone will create a 3rd party replacement if they get rid of it.
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Actually, with Spaces, this might not be hard to do. All you need is a container to run web apps that you can full screen, right?
 
Its just disabled by default, you can still turn it on. Phew... Move on people nothing to see here, dashboard is not gone,
 
I like Dashboard and I started thinking about what I'd do without it. I haven't gotten into the notification center much, but I started thinking of having a few small apps open on another "desktop space". I believe I remember being able to run widgets as apps (can't check that right now on my work dell) so maybe the feeling is that Dashboard and expose were somewhat the first iteration of spaces and notification center.

*Oh and remember how awesome the graphic was the first time you saw the ripple as you added the widget. That was cool.
 
lunarworks said:
I don't Apple abandoned it as much as developers lost what little interest they had in it.
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If developers "lost interest" it was because Dashboard got buried as a feature, and because Apple never set up an App Store to monetize widget development.

At one point, F4 on every Apple keyboard had a Dashboard icon and that was set out of the box to launch Dashboard. Then they switched it to a little grid icon for Launchpad, pretty much burying Dashboard. They also never managed to create a viable App Store for widgets (or better yet, allowed iOS apps to port to Dashboard widgets).

So yeah, Apple most definitely did abandon and fail to develop this feature.
 
I am going to miss you like crazy when you go, Dashboard. Please don't go. I know you're considering jumping, but just look to this thread how many people love you. Chose life auld friend.
 
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