Praveen Nagaraj for Appleosophy:
Apple announced macOS Catalina [on Monday] at WWDC 2019, and released the first developer beta. After extensively going through the beta, we believe that cacOS Catalina does not support the dashboard anymore.
In macOS Catalina, we used Terminal to attempt to force the dashboard to disable and enable. Usually, this should have brought back an inactive dashboard. However, this wasn’t the case. The dashboard is still missing, and did not return after this forced reboot.
Another key giveaway is the absence of the Dashboard application in the Applications [folder]. It is marked with a question mark, the same way as iTunes is.
MacDailyNews Take: “The Mac still has Dashboard?” we imagine many people asking. That’s how popular it was.
Dashboard was disabled by default in macOS 10.10 Yosemite. In macOS 10.14 Mojave, Dashboard is still disabled unless you enable via Mission Control or add it to the Dock fromt he Application folder.
Buh-bye, ol’ MacDailyNews Widget. R.I.P.
Damn… as one who used it all the time to check the weather in different areas of the world… Will there be an alternative?
There is a weather widget in Notification Center.
good point on the weather widget in notifications… but what about the conversion widget in dashboard and the multiple clocks for different parts of the world that I use all the time?
duh… just saw the world clock in notifications center… but still leaves the conversion widget
Ask Siri
yeah, but if you’re not under a internet connection… you’re out of luck with Siri
Or if you’re on an older desktop with no microphone. I guess I’ll have to turn on Spaces and set up one desktop just for apps that provide the same functionality, and keep them open there.
I liked Dashboard (especially for currency conversions, language translation, thesaurus, time zones, etc.), but used it less and less over the years. It was super handy.
It’s a shame Google searches have replaced most of what I used Dashboard for.
I also liked Dashboard and used it occasionally to check the weather (I really liked Radar in Motion) or stock quotes with the Yahoo stock widget. I always had Sloth Cam running. The calculator was somewhat useful as it was just a keystroke away. I was pissed when WeatherBug was taken away. Dashboard seems sort of finicky in Mojave. However… I’m not going to cry about it going away in Catalina which offers so much more. Dashboard widgets could have been developed a lot more, but it never turned out that way. As a commenter said, Google search will do just as well to replace most widgets.
I use Dashboard all the time. I emailed them years ago to not remove Dashboard; at least make it optional. This is vexing.
Dashboard is 32-bit code. Catalina drops support for 32-bit code.
This really sucks without an acceptable substitute from Apple that doesn’t require I have to search hither and yon and be denied Dashboard’s convenience all in one place. Dashboard was easy and quick but to it’s dying breath suffered from NITSEP (Never In The Same Exact Place). I would expect some enterprising app developer will give us a substitute and fill in yet another Apple gap.
Yah ever notice when a technology becomes old but still valuable to many (Quicktime, etc.) Apple let’s it languish and then simply lets it go hoping no one will notice?
Dang, I actually do use the widgets daily to track stocks, packages and weather.
Of course it’s some 32 bit apps I don’t want to pay to update that’s going to keep me from Catalina for quite a while.
Apple is effectively killing the Mac by pricing out of existence. Remember Sun?
Been overlooking dashboard for almost 10 years up until a few weeks ago I unintentionally launched it and was like, holy crap I still have this?
Rocked it often back in 08-08 when I had a late 06 17” iMac C2D and an 04 12” iBook G4 just to keep an eye on available memory. How times have changed as i haven’t worried about ram since 2010
Huh. My whole family uses Dashboard constantly on all our various Macs. The convenience of a swipe on trackpad or Magic Mouse, or side squeeze on Mighty Mouse, to get to a calendar, calculator, weather, dictionary, stock ticker, etc. cannot be overstated. Yes, there’s plenty of other ways to get those functions, but this was FAST. Swipe, glance, swipe, done.
I use dashboard to add sticky notes of motivational quotes I come across, along with weather, stocks, calculator, a system monitor, etc. convenient to have in one place. I don’t think such widgets are supported on the desktop? Notification center is a poor replacement. The widgets never remain in the order I arrange them. Sigh to another useful feature of Mac OS axed (Cover flow removal has been the biggest annoyance for me). Besides Continuity/iCloud tabs I can’t think of another useful feature added to the last 5 years of Mac OS “updates”.
I never use Launchpad, and only Mission Control when I’m trying to find a desktop that’s disappeared. They could get rid of both those and I wouldn’t miss `em.
Dashboard will be substituted by ios apps in no time
Apple never fixed the buggy problem of Dashboard widgets staying in place. I constantly have to move things like many weather widgets back to where they were. Really Apple? You also couldn’t write 64-bit versions for Catalina and made the whole Dashboard idea even more useful instead of just deleting it?
Ditton your comments. I used. it several times a day every day.
Upgraded to Catalina. Started using it. Suddenly realised – no Dashboard. Spent ages trying to find it, until I came across these threads. I’m really, really unhappy. I used it 20 or 30 times a day for currency conversion, unit conversion, world times, dictionary, tides, aeroplane tracking, and a whole lot of other things – just a four-finger swipe to the right and I had it all there in front of me. I’m now trying to get the Notification Centre to work for me, and I guess in time I’ll find ways to get everything done, but it’s an upheaval. And there just isn’t enough room in Notifications for all the widgets I use, even if I can find replacements, so I shall have to find other ways of getting what I want for lots of things. Perhaps I’m getting old….