Just one year after Catalina killed Dashboard, Apple started allowing developers to bring their iOS widgets over to the Mac in macOS Big Sur. 1Īpple killed off Dashboard at exactly the wrong time. The party had packed up years earlier, leaving just a small percentage of users still relying on the feature. By the time Apple finally pulled the plug on Dashboard in macOS Catalina, most of the widgets that once graced this corner of the OS had died off. Keyboards that once shipped with a dedicated Dashboard shortcut were slowly phased out. The design of Dashboard got toned down over time, and eventually it wasn’t even enabled by default on clean macOS installations. The original design of Dashboard was very of its time. They were present when you needed them, and disappeared when you didn’t. Jobs pitched widgets as mini-apps that let you look up a quick bit of information without ruining your workflow or train of thought. I was insanely jealous of him for about 72 hours after we both installed Tiger in our dorm room.) However, college roommate’s aluminum PowerBook could do it without breaking a sweat. (My Titanium PowerBook’s GPU couldn’t render the water ripple effect that played when a new widget was added to Dashboard. Adding new ones could be done with a click of the mouse. While not as flashy or important as Tiger’s keystone feature, Spotlight, Dashboard still enjoyed a big push from Jobs on stage.Ī user could tap a keyboard shortcut or visit a hot corner and Dashboard would activate, dimming the screen and flying in widgets. A few years ago, I wrote about the now-dead Dashboard, which was was in macOS for a long, long time:

Apple mac dashboard widgets