Dashboard Feature Eliminated in macOS Catalina

[JWD]

Didn’t realize it was on the latest MacOS, haven’t used Dashboard in years lol

 

[tentales]

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Seriously, very small number of people use Dashboard. No one makes widgets for Dashboard anymore. It's a good decision to remove it.

Seriously some people assume to know how many other people use something or not, based on their own confirmation bias. Did you by any chance commission a statistically significant poll ? Or just base your opinion on what *you* use and maybe a handful of your friends & co-workers ?

I've used Mac's since 1985 and have always been appreciative of innovations and progress in GUI design, but Apple has just moved on to a different planet, in both hardware and UI.

I have briefly used Notifications on iOS & OS X when it first came out and never since. In fact, it's disabled. However, Dashboard is a daily useful piece of information that can be absorbed in a few seconds sine I've designed my layout and placement of all the widgets and muscle memory is a great tool in expediting one's workflow.

Great if you like Notifications and not Dashboard, but I wish people like you here would stop assuming what is best for the rest of us just because YOU don't work that way.

I certainly won't be upgrading.

 

[k1121j]

Ha I thought it was already gone..

 

[0388631]

Gadgets had their place in the mid 2000s. So long. People still use crap like Rainmeter today and I simply can't understand why.

 

[kylepro88]

Hmm... I use it to check date, upcoming days, basic temp, and use the calculator constantly. That's a bummer.

 

[Rene Bos]

Dashboard, a longtime Mac feature that Apple has been phasing out for the last few years, has been eliminated in macOS Catalina and it is no longer available for use.

The Dashboard option, first introduced in OS X 10.4 Tiger, used to be a prominent Mac feature, housing sticky notes, a weather interface, a clock, a calculator, and other customizable widgets.

It was disabled by default starting in macOS 10.10 Yosemite, and in the current version of macOS, Mojave, it's still disabled unless you seek it out, enabling it as part of Mission Control or adding it to the Dock.

In Catalina, there is no more Dashboard app at all, as pointed out by Appleosophy. It can't be enabled via Mission Control and there's no sign of it in the operating system, marking its official demise.

Article Link: Dashboard Feature Eliminated in macOS Catalina

I found that it slowed down my iMac a lot - so I deleted all widgets a long time ago and since my iMac feels a lot snappier.

 

[return2sendai]

OK, so no more Dashboard. But what about the dashboard widgets. I float several on my desktop without accessing dashboard. Will the widgets still work on Clitoris?
[doublepost=1559741323][/doublepost]Less is less.

 

[MistrSynistr]

I must admit, I've been using Macs since 2011 or so and had no idea this even existed. I literally just spotlight searched it now and opened it, and was blown away by the 1999 icons. lol. Interesting.

 

[alex2792]

Who still uses it? It hasn’t been updated in ages.

 

[MacBH928]

I like the dashboard and not sure why it was ignored for so long and the notification center is a worse alternative, that being said this thing have not been used for years.

I didn't hear of any new widgets or updates or features or news about this thing for like at least 7 years.

 

[allanq]

- One glance
- Calendar
- Weather
- World Clock
- CPU stats
- Room for a picture
- No scrolling needed.


Seriously, very small number of people use Dashboard. No one makes widgets for Dashboard anymore. It's a good decision to remove it.

I think Dashboard can show a higher density of information than Notification Center. I use both and most of the time Notification Center is good for a quick glance. But when I need detailed data, I switch to Dashboard.

Here is my layout. From here, I have:
- Detailed info on all my attached storage, network, temps and battery levels
- A graphic 7 day forecast that I can pause and scroll
- News list
- Quick access to a basic calculator. (I have my Dashboard hot corner set for the bottom right of the screen)

For most users, Notification Center is enough. But there are times when you need more.

 

[bbeagle]

This is not good. I'll have to look for other options, and avoid upgrading until I find them....

I currently use it for weather, calculator, currency converters, a quick game of chess, a CPU/Network monitor, and a GitHub monitor. It's so easy to hit F12 and see everything there.

I have about 3 months to figure out how to do without it or find a replacement. Why, Apple, why? So many people here seem to use this.

 

[RobertPS]

That's terrible, double swipe on the magic mouse to the left and I can see the weather, Istat Pro, track&trace, use the calculator, unit conversion, double swipe to the right and I'm right back. It's in daily use here.

 

[cyberlocke]

Ahh, I still remember my amazement at the fluid effect when a new widget came on the screen. Is all the pining for the past simply nostalgia, or are we missing something now? I do love how my watch can control my TV or phone, how I can actually find my keys by pinging them, and how info is synced across all my devices. It's great! So why do I miss the days of a simpler, less connected past? Perhaps it was the thrill of discovery, as the days of 10.4 were when I was really starting to get into the Mac. Perhaps the complexity now makes it too difficult or time consuming to get a solid grasp of all that's going on "under the hood," which is something I want to do. Interestingly enough, my kids and I just got a Raspberry Pi set up last night, and I had a sense of that discovery and exhilaration I felt in my early Mac days. Raspbian is simpler, and it is easier to plumb the depths of what is happening "under the hood." Here's to learning new things.

 

[tethead]

gonna miss this...

anyone have any leads on a good currency widget for Notification Center?

 

[1rottenapple]

Honestly, feels like it makes sense. The Dashboard utilities feel so clunky now and I personally never use them anymore. Feels like the end of an era though.

Seems like the widgets sidebar would have replaced this. I was surprised to learn a yr ago it was still on my MacBook. I stopped using it years ago.

 

[lucidhysteria]

I am still using it daily, have some nice widgets to convert money fast and different others. Shame, but I do see that coming. Notification bar widgets can replace Dashboard but scrolling down isn't fun.

*I don't get why some people are enthusiastic about this, even if they didn't use, did this little feature slowed down their ssd or something lol. Chill guys.

Agreed. I use it almost daily for super quick calculator (since the last Dashboard widget you used seems to always retain focus, it's super easy to hit my Dashboard shortcut and just start typing numbers without having to click anything, etc. (which is the problem with the Notification Center widget)).

That said, this news has forced me to remember that both of our use cases (currency conversion and calculator) can be accomplished seemingly just as easily using Spotlight! Just hit CMD + Space and type, for instance $100 (or "100 euros," "100 yen," etc.) and you will automatically see a conversion to other common currencies. Likewise, I can hit CMD + Space and just start typing 13 / 3 or whatever (or more complicated stuff, like my screenshot) and it will... you know, calculate (it seems to support all of the functionality of the built-in Calculator app without having to open that app)

Not sure what specific currencies you were using before or if this is flexible to meet your needs, but hopefully for most of the tasks that us weirdos have still been using Dashboard for can be just as easily (if not more easily) performed using Spotlight (or, for glanceable things like upcoming Calendar items, the Notification Center should suffice).

I do like the Stickies, though, but hopefully there's a third party solution that can do the same thing, but better...

 

[Nanotyrns]

Back then in the Windows ME / XP prior to SP2 age, you were considered lucky if your computer didn't crash in an hour. Windows XP was especially bad, just plugging in your computer to the LAN cable could infect it with all sorts of malware, automatically, yes, in seconds. The first thing to do at that time was to unplug the computer from LAN (or disconnect from WiFi if you're lucky to have WiFi), and to install all sorts of antivirus softwares / security updates (just download whatever patches needed from another computer and burn a CD/DVD to install offline...) in it. What an era.

Dashboard was good in the non-retina era. I loved it in my first iMac, you know, before the iPhone. After the iPhone the need to have those widgets on the computer has gone. At least after I installed iStat Menus.

I guess they assume that it's no longer needed with Notification Center in macOS but there was the advantage of not having to scroll through the many widgets some of us like to have. Dashboard just displayed it all right there for you.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Since 10.0, you can take all the features that have been removed and create a brand new OS from it.

 

[Micky Do]

- One glance
- Calendar
- Weather
- World Clock
- CPU stats
- Room for a picture
- No scrolling needed.

Seriously, very small number of people use Dashboard. No one makes widgets for Dashboard anymore. It's a good decision to remove it.

What evidence do you have that a very small number of people use Dashboard? Plenty responding here use it, some multiple times a day. I use it most days, sometimes multiple times.

 

[BornAgainMac]

I hope nothing else besides 32-bit apps, iTunes, and Dashboard gets on the chopping block. I still use Automator for example.

 

[Nanotyrns]

This is not good. I'll have to look for other options, and avoid upgrading until I find them....

I currently use it for weather, calculator, currency converters, a quick game of chess, a CPU/Network monitor, and a GitHub monitor. It's so easy to hit F12 and see everything there.

I have about 3 months to figure out how to do without it or find a replacement. Why, Apple, why? So many people here seem to use this.

I think it's a veteran power-user feature that probably people newer to Mac don't use. Apple likely has a crazy amount of data on feature usage and just made the decision that it wasn't worth supporting something that 4% (I'm just throwing a figure out there) of Mac users were utilizing. However that's on them. We all know about Dashboard because they hyped it when it first shipped and have gradually stopped talking about it in favor of other features so of course new users might not have any idea it's there. If you don't encourage users and developers to support the feature set, well then this happens.

Imagine that instead of letting it languish and atrophy they remodeled it after the current notification center on iOS. Bring it inline visually with the current design language and then market it.

 

[maverick28]

 

[oliversl]

Bad news, why can Apple just leave that feature disabled and let people decide to enable it? Jony Ive is destroying everything Steve Jobs build. Ohh the ego.

 

[mryingster]

Kind of sad. From 10.4-10.6 or so I used Dashboard multiple times on a daily basis. I honestly haven't used it in years at this point, and even forget that it's there sometimes.