While macOS Catalina includes many new features and enhancements, at least one iconic Mac feature has bit the dust. With macOS 10.15, Apple has killed its famous Dashboard feature completely. This comes after Apple made it increasingly hard to access with last year’s Mojave release.
It had a long run, but it seems in the next major release of macOS—macOS Catalina—Apple is finally killing off its Dashboard feature once and for all. Club Deadspin.
In macOS Catalina, Dashboard is nowhere to be found at all. Appleosophy even went as far as to try and enable the feature via Terminal, but without any luck. Furthermore, if you head to the Launchpad view to see all of your apps, you’ll likely see a question mark over the icon, indicating that the actual application is gone.
Dashboard originally came to the Mac as part of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, with Apple touting it as a way to quickly access basic information through widgets like weather, clocks, sticky notes, and more.
In macOS 10.10 Yosemite, Apple disabled Dashboard by default. Last year’s release of macOS 10.14 Mojave made it even harder to access, hiding it in Mission Control or requiring that you add it to your dock. While it’s technically possible that Apple could add a Dashboard-like feature back to macOS during the Catalina beta testing period, that seems unlikely.
Many features of Dashboard can now be accessed via the Today tab in Notification Center on the Mac. Here, you can add widgets for various applications like Reminders, Calendar, weather, stocks, and more. It also integrates with third-party applications.
Were you still a Dashboard user in macOS? Will you be sad to see it go when macOS 10.15 Catalina is released to the public later this year? Let us know down in the comments.
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First launched 14 years ago with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in 2005, Dashboard gives people a way to get information and perform simple tasks quickly and easily, without leaving the context of the current app (Best Mac Cleaner 2020). This longtime Mac feature is getting quietly removed from the upcoming macOS Catalina update, as first noted by Appleosophy and later reported by MacRumors.
Substitute As Apple Dashboard For Mac Catalina Island
In macOS Catalina, Dashboard is nowhere to be found at all. Appleosophy even went as far as to try and enable the feature via Terminal, but without any luck (iMessage and FaceTime Waiting for Activation). Furthermore, if you head to the Launchpad view to see all of your apps, you’ll likely see a question mark over the icon, indicating that the actual application is gone (How To Download iCloud Photos on iPhone).
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 (App Can't Be Opened Because Apple Cannot Check It for Malicious Software.). However, this wasn't the case. The dashboard is still missing.
It'd represent a sad but unsurprising end when we saw Apple killed iTunes, and now it turns to Dashboard (How To Uninstall Programs on Mac). The decision to disable Dashboard by default in Yosemite is the start point toward improving macOS desktop experience by Apple. However, the simple removal of Dashboard (so does iTunes) probably is not the best way to cure all legacy problems.
The Bottom Line
Substitute As Apple Dashboard For Mac Catalina 2017
Were you still a Dashboard user in macOS? Will you be sad to see it go when macOS 10.15 Catalina is released to the public later this year? How about using Dashboard alternative widgets like AirMail, Fantastical, or Todoist (How To Transfer Files Between iPhone and Mac)?