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Dashboard was a fantastic addition to Mac OS X when it debuted in 10.4 Tiger. You could have dozens of widgets open, organized in any order you wanted, and those widgets would provide a wealth of information and functionality. What never made sense to me was that you could only view widgets when you pressed F12, which caused Dashboard to dim the screen. Apple apparently felt that widgets needed to be hidden away, working in the background, and only come to the surface when you called on them.
The reality, for many of us, is that we have one or two favorite widgets that we wish could remain open all the time, even if temporarily. For example, when a family member or friend is flying into town, I like to use the Flight Tracker widget to monitor the flight’s progress. A few hours later, I won’t need to use it again, but until the flight lands, I find myself checking it quite often. In addition to those favorite widgets, the fact that 10.5 Leopard has brought us Spaces allows us to take even greater control of the Desktop and avoid clutter. The average screen resolution has increased since Tiger, allowing even more windows on screen. Thus, it’s time to unleash Dashboard and let those widgets stay on the Desktop.
How do we do that? We have to go back to the Terminal, but this one is easy: it requires only one line to be copied and pasted. Let’s get started.
Using Terminal
- You can find Terminal in your /Applications/Utilities folder (this means you need to open the Applications folder, and from within the Applications folder, open the Utilities folder). Open up the application and type (or better yet, copy and paste) the following line, then hit return:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
- This tells Dashboard to enable its developer mode, which we need to accomplish this trick. If you ever want to turn the developer mode off, all you need to type is:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode NO
- Quit the Terminal.
Grabbing Widgets from Dashboard
- Press whichever key you have assigned to Dashboard to bring it up (on my old keyboard, it’s F12; on newer keyboards, the default is F4).
- You need to open whichever widget you want to keep on the Desktop. If it’s already open, great. If not, select it from the bottom of the screen and place it anywhere you like.
- Now, all you need to do is click on the widget and continue to hold the mouse button down.
- Press the Dashboard key again (F12 or F4) while holding the widget, and the Dashboard screen should disappear while your widget stays on the Desktop.
- I find that moving the widget slightly while holding the mouse button down ensures that the trick works.
- You can repeat this any number of times to add more widgets.
- If you want to configure or close these Desktop widgets, you do it exactly the same way as if they were in Dashboard.
- Finally, if you’d like to return the widgets to Dashboard rather than close them, do the trick in reverse: click and hold the widget, press the Dashboard key, and Dashboard appears, let go of the widget.
Did this trick work for you? Is there any other way you have done this? Have you found particularly helpful uses for widgets? Let others know in the comments.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Here’s where the solution comes into play. There’s an awesome little hack to enable widgets to be on your desktop at all times. Simply open Terminal and then type in the following command:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
After entering this command you’ll need to restart the Dock by entering following command:
killall Dock
After you’ve down both commands you can simply open Dashboard (F12), click and drag/move around the widget, continue to click and drag the widget and hit F12 again. When you’ve got it where you want it. Drop it (let off on the mouse/track pad) and it should stay on your desktop. To get it back in Dashboard, simply do the same click/dragging in reverse order. The reason why I stressed the dragging is because after doing a few tests of just clicking the widget while attempting to do this, the widget seems to get locked and lost in a layer that is neither the Dashboard nor the Desktop, and the only way to be able to grab the widget again is to invoke another “killall Dock.”
Original Post:
Posted By Jonathan Smith68
PS: this works perfect in Leopard
Is there a way to make the Widget stay in the background and not always over other apps? I’d like to view my widgets by using the four finger trackpad gesture to view the desktop.
The above instruction on how to keep a widget on the desktop does not work for OSx 10.4 Tiger NOR Osx 10.5.7 Panther.
I did everything as instructed. I typed the command in the terminal + hit return. Held the pointer down on the Exgrid widget I wanted + fn 12 or 4.
I tried the copy and paste method. All does not work.
So why are you tell people how to do it wrong, or explaining something that is not intended to work? Have you read your own instructions and tried it on other Macs?
@Marc. Make sure you restart the dock (killall Dock in Terminal) before you give up. The instructions work fine.
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