


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.
#Apple desktop widgets mac mac#
I have a very extensive Mac help area here on the site and invite you to check it out while you’re visiting! Thanks.A few years ago, I wrote about the now-dead Dashboard, which was was in macOS for a long, long time:
#Apple desktop widgets mac pro#
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about Apple and Mac since the OS ran on a 512K unit and the LISA was the big announcement. If there are no more changes, updates, or tweaks needed for any of the Control Center widgets, remember to click on “ Done” along the bottom to save everything.įixed! Not only that but as I move around, it’ll automatically now display the weather for my location every time, whether I’m in North Pole, Gravois Mills, Kansas City, or anywhere else! The window flips back around and the new location weather is displayed: That’s accomplished by clicking on “ Done” in the top right corner. I can quickly choose from this rather odd list of locations (all of which I have a connection to, but that’s another story) but the most useful choice is “ My Location“. A tap on the current city name and it offers a list of recently searched locations: In the case of the Weather widget, the window flips around and displays this:Īh-ha! Here’s where it’s getting Kansas City. That’s how you get to settings and configuration. ” that has shown up over the top left corner of each active widget.The change is rather dramatic as it spreads across your entire screen, highlighting some widgets and showing all widget categories: You can see it in the first image if you look closely. The settings area is found by instead clicking on the tiny “ Edit Widgets” button on the bottom of the Control Center. It doesn’t…Ĭlose the browser window, we won’t need it. A third-party widget! But there’s a problem here: I’m in Boulder, Colorado and the Control Center is showing me the weather for Kansas City.Ī logical reaction is to click on the widget with the assumption that it brings up a settings area. Notifications show up at the very top if present, then I have the weather widget, the Screen Time widget, and the slick CleanMyMac widget. Control Center you’ve hopefully already realized, is what you get when you click on the time on the very right edge of the menu bar on a modern Mac system. CHANGE LOCATION OF WEATHER FORECAST IN MAC WEATHER WIDGETįirst off, yes, “widget” is the official name for the tiny little mini-apps that run within Control Center. Turns out that specifying location is part of the “edit widget” feature.
#Apple desktop widgets mac update#
On an iPhone or iPad, the weather widget is tied to the Weather app, so it’s easy to know that you go into the app to adjust and update desired locations to change where the widget will show current and forecast weather. Instead of having it just sit on your desktop – or menu bar – however, it is pretty nice to have it just a click away… Of new widgets has been rather glacial, however, so we do seem to be mostly stuck with the defaults, one of which is the weather widget. It mimics a similar feature in iOS, but that’s good: Why not have the Mac system steal the best features and elements of the mobile experience? The introduction I’m a big fan of the new Control Center in MacOS 11, actually.
