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Disabling Dashboard 10000000% Safe?

T

theturtle

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 3, 2009
579
35
Hello, just wanted to be 100000% sure before i actually do this. (im running Lion GM if that matters). Im looking to disable my dashboard because i dont use it at all but i was curious, is there ANY downsides to this? Is messing with the terminal and disabling it harmful to the machine in either long term or short term? Just wanted to be sure before i went ahead with this.

Oh yeah, do i have to re enable the dashboard when new software updates are released or can i apply OS (the 10.7.1 type of updates) with the dashboard disabled and not have my system mess up. :3
 
theturtle said:
Just wondering because a member stated that they saw a 30% increase in fps when disabling dashboard in lion (because it runs in the background even when not activated)
Click to expand...

I think you're mistaken my friend. Check your Activity Monitor after a fresh restart, Dashboard ain't runnin'.

EDIT: But on a side note, disabling Dashboard through the Terminal is harmless and yes, you'll have to reactivate it if you ever want to use it again.

BTW, 30% gain in FPS in what?
 
theturtle said:
Just wondering because a member stated that they saw a 30% increase in fps when disabling dashboard in lion (because it runs in the background even when not activated)
Click to expand...

Sometimes there are third-party widgets that consume a lot of CPU cycles, but if you don't install any of those, you don't need to delete Dashboard.
 
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/12869654/

GimmeSlack12 said:
I think you're mistaken my friend. Check your Activity Monitor after a fresh restart, Dashboard ain't runnin'.

EDIT: But on a side note, disabling Dashboard through the Terminal is harmless and yes, you'll have to reactivate it if you ever want to use it again.

BTW, 30% gain in FPS in what?
Click to expand...

do you have to reactivate it when OS updates come through or is it fine to update your OS with it deactivated. Weird question i know. Just want to be thorough and figure out if there are any cons (more so in harmful ways) to disabling.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
theturtle said:
do you have to reactivate it when OS updates come through or is it fine to update your OS with it deactivated. Weird question i know. Just want to be thorough and figure out if there are any cons (more so in harmful ways) to disabling.
Click to expand...

Like I told you, you'll be fine. Dashboard is an application so any future updates to it will be handled no differently than if you didn't disable it. But again, if you haven't started Dashboard then you really don't need to worry because it isn't running. You're already 100000000000000000000% Safe, and dude, that's like CRAZY safe.
 
Dashboard is currently using 32MB of RAM and 0.0 percent of my processor. In my book freeing that up may give me an extra 0.000000000000000001 Frame per second, oh and thats not the RAM but the 0.0 percent processor usage.
 
I have also read elsewhere that Dashboard is a GPU hog, even when in the background. As the OP stated, users have seen up to a 30% increase in graphics performance when disabling it.

Yes, this is a GPU issue, not RAM, and not CPU so those of you quoting RAM and CPU loads are missing the point.
 
kryptticAZ said:
I have also read elsewhere that Dashboard is a GPU hog, even when in the background. As the OP stated, users have seen up to a 30% increase in graphics performance when disabling it.
Click to expand...

Dashboard launches the first time you use it. If you never open it after a restart, it's not launched. If it's not launched, it doesn't use any RAM, CPU or GPU whatsoever.

Remove it from the dock, delete the keyboard shortcut and disable the gesture, and it will never launch.
 
You should have no problems. I used to do this all the time on iBooks/Powerbooks to conserve CPU cycles and battery life. I don't see any ill effects on newer MBPs.
 
Disabling Dashboard is guaranteed safe. I did this on my mac, but I didn't see any performance gains. Not big, at least. You can disable it when you don't need it, and enable it when you do need it. :)
 
When the minimum requirements for your OS is almost the same as your specs disabling Dashboard can be helpful, but if you're running Lion your hardware will be good enough to cope easily.
 
anyway if u still want to disable dashboard like me because i don't use widgets at all, just put this in terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

press enter, and then put this too:

killall Dock

and enter.
 
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