

In Mission Control Preferences, set a Mouse or keyboard shortcut then use that to access Dashboard. If you have set Dashboard as a space, use a Trackpad to access. You can put the Mac to sleep, log out, restart, or shut down, all after. Open Siri in the Menu bar and ask Open Dashboard, or something similar. What that something is depends on what happens when you click the “i” to configure the widget. Press (or rather click) this single button in the Dashboard to make something happen on your Mac. Even so, the widgets mentioned here are worth it for those quick-hit kind of moments.

Dashboard widgets on your Mac are a reflection of your busy lives. However, not everyone is a fan of the Dashboard, with some Mac users preferring to disable the Dashboard entirely. Still, Mac widgets under Mountain Lion are now taking second fiddle to the Mac App Store. Your Macs Dashboard hosts a range of mini apps, known as widgets, that are designed to provide you with easy access to important features and information. Mac Dashboard widgets get you the information you want, now. Rather than getting heaped with information we can’t understand, dashboard UX designs help us understand what is really important, and open up a data wonderland where we can understand everything, interpret everything, and make use of the story it is telling us. Great dashboard UI designs are developed daily to remind us of the unlimited possibilities we have to present data in a creative way. Here’s how to disable Dashboard in OS X.Dashboard design. But if you no longer have use for the once-exciting feature, you can disable it to both simplify your user experience and potentially save a small amount of system resources. If you still use Dashboard, the good news is that Apple appears content to let it silently live on, even in the latest developer builds of OS X Yosemite. Most of the information that was once so impressively obtained via Dashboard - stock prices, sports scores, weather updates - is now usually delivered via smartphones, tablets, and new OS X features like Notification Center. The app’s competitor, Konfabulator, is long gone, and Apple has neglected its widget download page. Now 10 years later, Dashboard is an afterthought for most OS X users. Mac fans marveled at the slick interface for displaying useful widgets, and the company quickly opened widget development to third parties. When Apple introduced OS X 10.4 Tiger during WWDC 2004, a major selling point of the new operating system was Dashboard.
