Dashboard Feature Eliminated in macOS Catalina

[allapple]

GEEEEEE zus!! Is nothing sacred?!! Dashboard was one of the last apps that still looked like old Apple!! Just 1 Hot Corner move and I had access stocks, weather, dictionary etc.... Might as well change Apple to Applesauce for all the mushy mess we keep getting!!

 

[adrianlondon]

I used it regularly and miss it. I hope they start developing some useful widgets for the NC.

... it served as a cognitive-break.

It took you out of the OS for a moment (or task), gave you a more real world view, less cluttered (akin to game menu) and broke your focus in a soft transitional way - akin to looking out a window for a quick visual break.

Beautifully put! I'll have to start actually looking out the window instead.

 

[coolfactor]

And nothing of value is lost.

Purely subjective. The only problem with Dashboard was the huge neglect from Apple. It was a genius addition to the Mac that was easy for developers to implement widgets for. But it never got the love that it needed.

I use it regularly for quick tasks, although it was hard to find new widgets for some things I wanted to do.

- character counting
- text hashing (I used this all the time!)
- Regex composition and testing

That was about it, though. I'm going to miss Dashboard. What a shame that Apple felt this was a feature not worth saving.

 

[ccsicecoke]

Why are people happy this is gone?!

You didn't HAVE to use it.

However, if you DID use it often (like me), you are right to be upset.

Just one less differentiator keeping me from giving Windows a fair shake.

I want to stay with Apple, but they JUST. KEEP. REMOVING. THINGS. I. LOVE.

EDIT:
TBH, I'm not going ANYWHERE. There's STILL too much good stuff in Apple's camp. But man, these last few years have been a painful exercise in letting go.

Couldn't agree more.
Apple's camp is still superior then Microsoft or Android but it's getting closer and closer, mainly because apple is ditching what makes it different and standing out from other competitors, one after another.

 

[ATC]

Not surprised but I am disappointed. For one, the weather data (from weather.com) that Apple displays in Notification Centre is absolutely atrocious for where I am. I found a great 3rd party widget that has a different source with accurate weather info for my location, and now that'll be lost with Catalina.

 

[coolfactor]

After all the fuss & hoopla surrounding it when it was released years ago — now denigrated to the garbage heap.
Makes you wonder what other current hyped stuff will be in the crosshairs

It really is concerning, isn't it? More and more, Apple is moving towards a setup where they can monetize everything. Dashboard widgets were free, therefore not something that Apple could make money from, but apps distributed through the App store are entirely different.

Not happy about this at all. But I'm sure there was a *technical* reason for it. Maybe the switch to 64-bit would render a lot of existing widgets unusable anyway, so that would become a poor user experience?

Sad.

 

[JetLaw]

Holy crap. I had no idea that was still around!

 

[Wildkraut]

RIP +1 Steve Jobs legacy

 

[DotCom2]

Oh, I'm on Mojave. I didn't even know it was gone. I never use it.

 

[Stella]

Dashboard was good initially but then Apple abandoned it and let it rot. It had more potential.

At least it’s gone now. Less bloat is good.

 

[j-a-x]

This is sad. I still use my widget SlothCam that I created back when I was in undergrad and iStat to monitor memory and swapfile usage. Good thing I crated a Cocoa version of Slothcam, but I still use the Widget more often because I like having it tucked away in a desktop space I can swipe in and out of.

 

[mudflap]

I'll miss it. I use it all the time to convert between picas and inches and every other unit on earth.

 

[code-m]

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.

TBH the Dashboard widget should have been eliminated when the sidebar notification panel was introduced, it basically duplicated the functionality. I find using the side notification bar convenient in comparison to Dashboard.

RIP Dashboard.

 

[Zwhaler]

Boo! Don't any of you use the sticky notes? Oh well, my Mac Pro is not supported beyond Mojave anyway. Fine with me! By the time I get a new Mac, I'll be able to live with it being gone.

 

[UKBeast]

I do not like notification center, it is narrow and not giving full screen widget advantage.

I am using dashboard daily for weather widgets, currency converter, istat menu, deliveries, world clocks. now with notification center i am on a crapped sidebar.

no, notification center is not giving the same experience.

there was more to improve on the dashboard but in favor of notification center they are discontinuing it. because macbooks and mac oses are not computers anymore. it is becoming like an iphone or an ipad and they are trying to make every effort to make it look like an iphone.

 

[MRrainer]

Oh-no! That cannot be true.

I use this almost daily, for the calculator or to convert currencies. And sometimes other units.
You can have multiple converter-widgets open with different pre-sets. It's so handy.
I also liked the world-clocks.

I was so glad when I found the option to enable it on Mojave.

 

[hellopupy]

To me this is shocking news.

Dashboard is crucial to my workflow. I'm sure I'm in the niche minority that highly treasures Dashboard but it might be the deciding factor against me choosing not to upgrade to Catalina, unless absolutely necessary.

All the world clocks I can add, measurement conversion, calculator, weather, and currency exchange, all modified to show up when I move my mouse to the bottom left corner. Instant access. Perfect for business.

Glad I'm not totally alone on this, the 2 posts above me seem to reflect exactly the same usage.

 

[MikeSweden]

NOOOOOOO. I love dashboard. I probably use it 20 times a day. Currency, Securityspy and much more. I hope there will be a third party version of it.

 

[code-m]

Terrible decision. The Notification Center was never a good replacement for Dashboard. With one tap I can get a glance at the calendar, weather, time in different time zones, CPU/fan stats, and even an astronomy picture of the day. Simple, fluid, and not constrained to a thin strip of desktop space that requires me to scroll. I use it multiple times a day. So much so that I'm not sure I'll upgrade to Catalina if they've taken it out.

In the next version of macOS, you will be permitted to pin those Notification Centre widgets to the desktop, similar to iPadOS. Technically it should have been part of this OS release.

 

[maverick28]

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.

What's clunky exactly? Never experienced any clunkiness. They took down some widgets as of High Sierra I'm running: Skyreport, FlightRadar (or smth along the lines) that wouldn't make connections to their respective data servers, Movies is a pretty widget showed actual movie schedule and let buy tickets right from within itself provided by US theaters, but sadly would not play trailers and besides that wouldn't show the similar information regarding theaters in my country. Apple could fix it.

Dashboard is my everyday use app and is clogged with widget instances. These widgets are: Weather for several countries, Clock, Calendar (truly, the king widget, reliable and precise),Converter, Stickies, Contacts (aka Address Book), Web-Clip, Calculator, Dictionary, Server app, 3rd party widgets - Sol (Day/Night dynamics at different seasons), Dash Phoon (Moon phases), WhoisConnected (every outbound connection, GUIed Unix command line), ASCII table widget, PageScreenshot (a nice widget that let you make a full web page length screenshot - the best alternative to analogical truly clunky and buggy solutions in other browsers).

But, of course, Apple knows better than me, how I want to approach my computer. It looks that, considering Catalina will be the last OS to support my Mac, I won't upgrade to it and will stop at High Sierra. I'm seriously pissed off.

 

[Black Belt]

Killed by Tim because it didn’t support Emojis

 

[Moonjumper]

Try Notification Centre.

The calendar is a totally different thing in Dashboard. It is simply the days. e.g. I want to make an appointment while on the phone. Offered 4th July. A quick check shows that is a Thursday. Default view in Notification Centre is the calendar today, which will be empty as I don't use any Apple Calendar since I missed an appointment twice, each time due to iCloud syncing deciding the appointments on my iPhone calendar shouldn't be there.

 

[JeffPerrin]

Use it every day! Sticky notes & weather app.

 

[coolfactor]

Sad. It's better than the notification center widgets.

I opened Notification Center (which does not make sense as a place for productivity widgets) and clicked on "App Store" at the bottom. I'm taken to the App Store where there's only 17 widgets available.... 17! The Dashboard had hundreds of widgets.

Something doesn't make sense unless this is a push to get more developers making Notification widgets.

Apple, you are bizarre sometimes.

 

[dogslobber]

This is outrageous. I can’t imagine a world without Dashboard.