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52 Comments
- oOLiquidNightOo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25Open up Terminal: (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
Type or Copy & Paste the following into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
Enter Dashboard (F12). Click and hold Widget, Leave Dashboard (F12) with Widget.
Reverse process to put it back into Dashboard. Or, you can option click it to exit out of the Widget. - mergaltroid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20You don't actually need to log off and log on again. After typing the command, just type 'killall Dock'. This restarts the dock, which also restarts dashboard.
- perryge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12I love this tip too, but one word of warning - enabling the Dashboard developer mode (which is what this tip does) will make widgets eat up a bit more memory than they normally would.
- t3hX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Or if you don't have TinkerTool in your /Applications/Utilities,,
-1. Download TinkerTool from http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.
0. Put TinkerTool in /Applications/Utilities - oOLiquidNightOo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+16You will have to LOGOUT before this will take affect, I forgot to mention that. Apologies.
- andrethegiant, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Or you could perform the same function with one click:
http://www.dashboardwidgets.com/showcase/details.php?wid=671 - danielyuhk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9yea but you need to enable the dashboard developer mode
- MikeZila, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11(I think) It's better having them on a seperate space. I used konfabulator for a long time before I got a mac, and I didn't like having to move every window to get at the desktop so I could see my widgets. This way they're one click away (expose, show desktop, and dashboard are all bound to buttons on my mouse) and you can get to them without moving any windows.
You could argue that you could just hit "show desktop" to move all your windows, but that, well...moves all your windows. What if I was trying to type something from one of them? or doing something that produced instant results? Why not just have your widgets appear on top of what you were doing?
If you use it for a few days (or minutes) you'll see what I'm trying to say. - Mejogid, on 10/12/2007, -9/+16Actually, they weren't in the same sentence.
- asthmatic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You can do this with out entering anything in terminal.
1. Press f12.
2. Click on plus button (lower left hand corner) to add new widget.
3. Add new widget by clicking and draging widget from bottom to desktop.
4. While still holding down on widget press f12.
tada - vistic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Or browse to ~/Library/Preferences/ and double-click on com.apple.dashboard.plist and then edit the value for devmode to 'YES'... since TinkerTool isn't included in the system.
- perryge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If you do it that way without enabling devmode you can only do it with one widget, and it'll go back as soon as you invoke Dashboard again. In devmode, you can do it to as many widgets as you want, and they'll stay on your desktop.
- starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2um... no he doesn't try to make you think apple invented it. i think everyone knows where it came from. but as i said... he... apple figured out how to keep from being a pain in the ass.
- gagravaar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Fair enough, guess I must have enabled dev mode, and either forgot I had, or done it in my sleep.
- rickcarson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3That is the thing about OS X, the occasional nice little surprise when you find out something you didn't know.
I used to think that keyboard shortcuts were pretty pointless, a kind of OS evolutionary throwback to the dinosaur days of typing pools and Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect on Dos. But now I use them all the time, since they are (mostly) consistent across apps on the OS X platform. It is one of the things that, in a way, saddens me about Linux, that the good thing is they have all these people running off and doing their own things, but that they'll never have an insanely great OS (from a user's point of view), since the whole thing is very foreign to any concept of _enforced_ consistent key-bindings.
But I'd never have realised what a good thing it is without actually using a platform with it.
'Discovering' a 'new' key-binding is like this thing with emacs. It's not earth shattering, it doesn't do my taxes or give me a Swedish massage. It is just some nifty thing which had always been there and gives a little ping of happiness... similar in many ways to the light dusting of amphetamines on all Apple products, so you keep having to buy new stuff to keep getting the high after fondling the new toy too much. :D - rickcarson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@zybch
Widgets aren't for earth shattering things. I don't necessarily want to get flight updates or weather all the time, so it makes sense to hide those things away.
Let's see, I have: 3 games, 1 chess puzzle (and/or Sudoku when the mood strikes), local weather (with forecast), Google search, silly Chuck Norris facts, a multi-coloured old style apple logo, and about 30 others downloaded but not opened.
@collywolly
F11 - minimise all windows so you can see the desktop*
and for completeness:
F9 - shows all windows of all apps in Expose
F10 - shows all windows of the current application
F12 - dashboard
F13 - unknown/nothing
F14 - make screen darker
F15 - make screen brighter
*I don't use this much. One of the genuinely bad decisions I think they made was setting the default place to download stuff to from Safari as the desktop. Along with turning on tabbed browsing and 'just saying no' to popups that is one of my standard config tweaks in all of my user accounts. But if I didn't do this, and instead had lots of crap on my desktop I'd use this a lot.
I also (on Windows) don't tend to have lots of links on the desktop. I know people who cover half or more of their screen with links and they can never find anything. On windows I tend to use the 'hide everything' (Windows-D) shortcut a lot simply to avoid the clutter problem. It is often far easier to minimise everything, and then find what I want on the start bar than alt-tabbing to it... but even that is more annoying than it used to be. I don't like how if it fills up it suddenly groups everything together and it is really hard to pick out the one you want.
Whereas ironically**, I do use the alt-tab (command-tab) trick quite a lot on the mac. There I alt-tab to get to the app I want, and then F10 to get to the window I want. I suppose F9 is theoretically quicker, but my bad habits from using windows in the 90's showing through again I guess.
**Since this was stolen from Windows? Or is stealing from Windows and doing it better than they did Serendipity instead of Irony?
Tragedy: the wrong thing at the wrong time
Comedy: the wrong thing at the right time
Irony: the right thing at the wrong time
Serendipity: the right thing at the right time. - vprice509, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2alexus, the thing just worked on my iBook G4. It is somewhat useful, even.
- liuping, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Pretty cool. It's something I've wanted to do from time to time, just not so badly that I actually googled to find out how. ;)
I wish the could be push to the background though. Floating on top is cool for development, but I don't really want a clock or the weather on top of everything else on screen... - gdog05, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is a feature in the new Vista Sidebar. Drag any Sidebar item onto the desktop. At least it works in my Beta version. I'm gonna guess it will be standard in OS X updates as well. I do wish the OS X widgets ran a bit faster. I use a new G5 at work with 2 gigs of RAM, and the widgets still take a while to draw. In contrast, the Adobe CS2 always loads fast. Maybe I just have a badly coded widget installed. Anyone else have slow draw times?
- scubasteve03, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ Mikezilla
Konfabulator had a feature identical to the way Dashboard functions called "Konsposé." I liked Konfabulator better because it was an either/or thing. You could have your widgets on the desktop or in Konsposé. - OS2Guy, on 07/14/2009, -0/+1Ok, tried it, liked it. How to get rid of it tho'? While on your desktop left mouse on the widget and move it just a smidge, then still holding down the F12 (F4 for me on a mini-keyboard) you get the dashboard back. Move the widget and push F12 (F4). Presto the widget returns to the dashboard. Now, how to get these widgets to stay behind other apps like EyeTV, etc?
- percussionlab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah guys, asthmatic has a great point. Theres no terminal needed if you just want to drag a widget onto your normal desktop. Just add the widget to your dashboard like usual, but while dragging your desired widget onto the screen, push F12 again so your normal desktop reappears and you still have your widget in tow.
- skidogallard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's more fun to do it this way.
- starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1>I would rather use konfabulator with the functionality built
>in than have all of this trouble.
konfabulator was always a pain for me. i tried multiple times to figure out how to make it useful but not in the way all the time. i use dashboard all the time. i did this little number with widgets a few months back and it was the same pain in the ass as konfabulator. konfabulator was the good idea. apple figured out how to make work... - skyfaller, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I can't get this to work (at least not without enabling dev mode)... perhaps that's why your comment has been dugg down.
- skyfaller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Actually, as some people suggested below, it works if you drag a new widget from the Dashboard dock... it just doesn't work with widgets that are already on your dock. My bad. Your instructions were merely incomplete.
- ductions, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1you cant drag the bouncy ball onto the desktop though :(
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/games/gogoredball.html - dmoney06, on 10/12/2007, -7/+7Pretty old, but useful for anyone that didn't know about it before.
- vbagate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think it is great.
- xspoon, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4
You know what makes this so damn cool?? I can now keep track of my Disney trip countdown on my desktop. I did not know you could do this. Thanks for the info.
OS X keeps getting better and better. This perception is from a person who used to use Windows XP everyday. - rickcarson, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Maybe having widgets modal is bad design.
But I don't think you'd want to have them all over the place all the time...
And my dock is pretty full. Maybe a second dock just for widgets.
Alternately you need some way to organise them out of the way... such as being able to have your own screens for different things, so you could have one with all your widgets, one with email and calendar, one for the web... oh wait... - vprice509, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Two new hobbits visit the shire:
Widget and Dock.
Dizzigg me dizzown, *****! - collywolly, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2by contrast Windows / Linux / BSD / any other OS out there gets crapper with every release...?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2FYI... Mac widgets are actually KONFABULATOR widgets. Jobs would make you think Apple invented it.
- neko, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4I don't see the point of putting these things into a separate layer, be it the dashboard or forced onto your root window / desktop. It's inconvenient. Just make it a normal window. We have so-called "window managers" for these things. It's a good system.
- alexus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Last login: Mon Sep 4 11:04:03 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
ibg4:~ alexus$ pull
-bash: pull: command not found
ibg4:~ alexus$
there is no such command on my ibook g4 - collywolly, on 10/12/2007, -10/+7Does that not just point to the modal nature of the dashboard being a crap design in the first place?
- virtualball, on 10/12/2007, -13/+10This is really old, none the less useful and fun but still old.
This is used for when developers develop widgets, its REALLY useful to be able to work on them while having them right next to you.
Fun Fun! - vprice509, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1On the Apple site, no less:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/developer/devmodewidget.html
So suck it! - boogie, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2Guys, nice post, but "coincidentally" this was featured in the MacCast (www.maccast.com) of august 30th... Amazing coincidence ;-)
- WinMacLin, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0This Terminal thing is so stupid you can do this without the Terminal trick.
Open Dashboard grab a new widget from the Dashboard dock, before letting go of the widget press your close Dashboard button and now let go of the widget. Boom it's on the desktop. - Auryn, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2they do collywolly. it's the f11 key
- mcorto, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Duplicate... http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050422172929402
- 64bit, on 10/12/2007, -16/+11amazing, and very useful.
- Quickbreak, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3If you don't want to use Terminal, you can:
1. Open Finder
2. Browse to Applications folder
3. Open the Utilities folder
4. Open TinkerTool
5. Select the "General" tab
6. Check "Enable Dashboard developer mode"
Either way works fine. - alefox, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1cool!!
- gagravaar, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3It's already built in.
Invoke dashboard - F12.
Click and hold the dashboard widget you want, move it slightly, still holding the widget (don't unclick - important).
Invoke dashboard - F12 again - the widget comes out of dashboard and sits on the desktop.
To put it back, reverse the procedure, or simply close the widget. - collywolly, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Just like anything that has Mac in the title, eh fanboi..?
http://digg.com/apple/How_to_access_hidden_games_in_your_macs_terminal#c2930402 - collywolly, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Surely OS X has some equivalent of the desktop button, that minimises all Windows at once, so you can easily see that sort of thing. Then click the button and it goes back.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -14/+6I'm not a mac user, however I thought that this was the way the widgets were supposed to work from the beginning. If not, then that really sucks.
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