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OS X El Capitan Dashboard
- Thread starter one|mac
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So weird that this still exists... It seems so outdated now, and looks really out-of-place with the Yosemite aesthetic.
I killed Dashboard years ago with a hidden setting via terminal... it remained dead in the update from Mavericks to Yosemite and from Yosemite to El Capitan. Mountain Lion -> Mavericks was the only OS Update that required me to rekill it.
No need to do it via a hidden setting, there's an option right in System Preferences to turn it off.
Apple, please don't kill off Dashboard. I use it all the time - nothing I have found is more convenient for jotting notes and calculations than Dashboard when it's an overlay. Notification Centre is more fiddly to use, has less widgets and obscures everything on the right of your screen. How is that an improvement over Dashboard?!
I agree, I don't know of any good alternative to the overlay and options of widgets that the dahsboard gives.
Also we can make our own widgets
The notes widget sucks. Use the Notes app that comes with OS X. That autosyncs with the Notes app in iOS. Hiding and showing it is as trivial as opening/closing dashboard. Or you could launch and quit the Notes app - supposedly with El Capitan it should be faster at launching apps.
The calculator, dictionary, and wikipedia widgets all also suck - use Spotlight.
My computer is from pre-Lion days, so nothing is as quick as tapping F4 for Dashboard and starting to type. It doesn't have syncing and it's very basic, but usually that's all I need. Usually it's for jotting down dimensions or a hex colour code or something trivial like that. If I need more, I will launch Notes, or TextEdit, or Stickies, or Pages (Apple should probably merge a couple of those apps...). Dashboard's the quickest, most convenient way to do it and I wish Apple wouldn't neglect it - it's still a superb feature of OS X.
I'd agree the Wikipedia and Dictionary widgets aren't great and I do use Spotlight more now, but I still use the calculator due to being able to have more than one on screen at once. Makes it much easier to keep track of things if you're doing more than one calculation.
We use the dashboard here lots where we have over 100 Macs Deployed , i would have a riot on my hands if it went. I also use it lots, only for the stickies though. Lots here use it the web clips widget.
New installs of Yosemite default to "System Preferences: Mission Control: Dashboard: Off", so it's clear Apple wants us all to move to Notification Center (the iOS/OSX hybrid baby which acts identically on each OS).
To be honest though, I only used the dashboard for the calculator and calendar. Now I use the notification center calendar, and the spotlight arithmetic input for doing math. Not sure they're going to keep it for much longer since it's basically the precursor to Notification Center, and Dashboard looks out of place and weird as hell now.
To be honest though, I only used the dashboard for the calculator and calendar. Now I use the notification center calendar, and the spotlight arithmetic input for doing math. Not sure they're going to keep it for much longer since it's basically the precursor to Notification Center, and Dashboard looks out of place and weird as hell now.
Apple doesn't really kill off things the way they used to. If something doesn't take much effort to keep around, and even a small amount of people use it, they want to keep it. There are many legacy apps in OS X and it doesn't bother the people that don't use them.
I hope not, I find it very handy and use it all the time. In fact, when the system isn't in active use of apps, it sets on my desktop ready for use. It's very basic but useful for me.
Use Dashboard roughly 25 times a day at work, I'm sure others are using it as well where I work, I would sure miss it.
Top left corner hotspot set to Dashboard = Productivity enhancement for me. I use it all the time. I guess if I could have widgets in the Notification center, that would also work fine for me. But then again, Microsoft did that first and Apple didn't like advanced widgets in iOS' Notification Center, so I doubt they'll end up there, so I do expect Dashboard to get the axe in a couple of OS releases.
I just looked it up, but to me it only appear to display information. Am I missing something?
I had a look and it seems Apple doesn't allow text entry in notification center widgets. That's unfortunate...
Maybe use Alfred as a Dashboard replacement for text entry? You can set up workflow scripts that can do pretty much *anything* on the Mac, and loads are prewritten for things like Evernote text entry. For instance: "Cmd+Space" to open Alfred, type "enn This is a new evernote entry" (with "enn" being the prefix you chose to trigger the evernote workflow), and hit enter and it will be added to Evernote. You can even configure hotkeys to bring up alfred with some prewritten text; so you could do something like "Option+X" = opens Alfred with the letters "enn " prewritten and ready for you to write more text. So it's faster than Dashboard. Have a look at it.
Here's the official Evernote workflow: http://support.alfredapp.com/evernote
I use Alfred constantly and have set up things like "Option+X" = opens Alfred with the converter keyword prewritten; so I can type something like "Option+X $100 EUR" to get the value for 100 USD in EUROs, or "Option+X 1 foot meter" to get the size of a foot in meters.
It can also control media players, launch applications, find files and act on them (like open, open with application X, open terminal here, show in finder, etc).
Alfred is yet another reason why I never use Dashboard anymore. I had forgotten OS X even had Dashboard and when I opened it yesterday, I was greeted with years-old widgets. Embarrassing... ;-)
Maybe use Alfred as a Dashboard replacement for text entry? You can set up workflow scripts that can do pretty much *anything* on the Mac, and loads are prewritten for things like Evernote text entry. For instance: "Cmd+Space" to open Alfred, type "enn This is a new evernote entry" (with "enn" being the prefix you chose to trigger the evernote workflow), and hit enter and it will be added to Evernote. You can even configure hotkeys to bring up alfred with some prewritten text; so you could do something like "Option+X" = opens Alfred with the letters "enn " prewritten and ready for you to write more text. So it's faster than Dashboard. Have a look at it.
Here's the official Evernote workflow: http://support.alfredapp.com/evernote
I use Alfred constantly and have set up things like "Option+X" = opens Alfred with the converter keyword prewritten; so I can type something like "Option+X $100 EUR" to get the value for 100 USD in EUROs, or "Option+X 1 foot meter" to get the size of a foot in meters.
It can also control media players, launch applications, find files and act on them (like open, open with application X, open terminal here, show in finder, etc).
Alfred is yet another reason why I never use Dashboard anymore. I had forgotten OS X even had Dashboard and when I opened it yesterday, I was greeted with years-old widgets. Embarrassing... ;-)
Dashboard is handy, ill admit...It'd be nice or wishful thinking if they could repurpose it with an notifications center touch. and combined OS X apps instead of widgets - Notes instead of "stickies" persay, Calendar integration, etc
Basically notifications but in a dashboard view would be amazing.
Basically notifications but in a dashboard view would be amazing.