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How To Use Dashboard Widgets On Your Desktop
Mar 11, 2025
A quick demo of how to use dashboard widgets on your desktop.
View Video Transcript
0:06
hey everyone today I'm going to be
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showing you how you can use dashboard
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widgets on your desktop now when
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dashboard was released U everybody
0:13
thought it was a really cool thing and
0:15
the widgets from it eventually became a
0:16
part of iOS but in later releases of Mac
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OS 10 you know snow leopard Etc it's
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really gotten tossed by the wayside and
0:26
nobody talks about it anymore and you
0:27
don't see much about it and personally I
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I think that's because it's very out of
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the way and you don't even really notice
0:34
it in your system uh but there's a way
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that you can have your dashboard widgets
0:40
right in your desktop where you can
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easily access them and it makes
0:43
dashboard a thousand times more useful
0:45
so to do this you're going to need to
0:47
use terminal now if you're new to
0:49
terminal or something like that this
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might be a little bit intimidating but
0:53
it's fairly easy and it's not going to
0:54
wreck your Mac or anything like that
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it's it's just fine so to get the
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terminal you can just go up to your
0:59
spotlight menu and type in
1:07
terminal and terminal all open now what
1:10
you're going to have to do here is
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you're going to have to write a string
1:15
of text and it's just fairly simple
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string of text and then you'll have
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dashboard widgets available on your
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desktop so you have to write is
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defaults right
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com.
1:34
apple.
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dashboard Dev mode and Dev mode is all
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one word yes and spaces between
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everything except for coma. dashboard
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then all you have to do is hit enter and
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it's going to look like nothing happened
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you don't see anything you know there's
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no smoke or you know magical yes you did
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it nothing like that but it all happens
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in the background and it's done now if
2:00
you try what I'll show you next it won't
2:03
work unless you kill your doc first so
2:07
you have to type in kill all as one word
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space and then capital D OC C if you
2:14
don't have the capital D in Doc it won't
2:16
work you hit enter Doc's going to slide
2:19
down disappear and then everything's
2:21
ready now once again looks like nothing
2:23
happened but when you try to access
2:26
dashboard you'll see it open up just
2:28
like normal uh very routine it'll take a
2:31
little while on my system here so you
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can see dashboard open here now normally
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what you would do at this point is just
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look at your widgets like that and then
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return back to your desktop when you're
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done but what you can do now is if you
2:44
start dragging a widget and then you
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press the dashboard key on your keyboard
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in my case it's F4 it might be different
2:51
on your system and dashboard will go
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away now you have your widget still with
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you and it took down your mouse and you
2:58
can let it go and and now you have your
3:01
widget on your desktop and you can see
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it's fully functional I can put it
3:06
wherever I want and if you're new to the
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mac and you like the accessibility of
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the gadgets in Windows 7 uh you'll
3:13
probably really like this because it's
3:15
very similar in the fact that you can
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have your widgets anywhere on your
3:20
desktop that you want so I can put as
3:22
many widgets as I want on my desktop I
3:25
can bring them all over there if I want
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to very simply just like this you can
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see they all behave just like they're
3:32
supposed to if I could pick it
3:34
up on your desktop so it might be nice
3:38
to have a calculator oops
3:41
that might be nice to have a calculator
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on your dashboard things like that and
3:46
they all are fully functional and you
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can place them wherever you want now
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this is great and all now you have all
3:51
your widgets here and they're easily
3:52
accessible but there is one in my mind
3:55
kind of glaring problem and that is that
3:59
the D board widgets stay on top of all
4:01
your other windows so say I have system
4:03
preferences open here and I try to use
4:05
it those widgets are still stuck on top
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annoying me and are in the way and
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unfortunately at this time there's
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nothing you can really do to get around
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this I haven't found any tweaks or
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anything to get rid of this so
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unfortunately you're going to have to
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live with it now if you decide this is
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enough you don't really like these
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widgets being on your desktop you can
4:25
easily get rid of it as well first
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you're going to have to take all the
4:29
widgets that are on your desktop bring
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them back into dashboard so to bring
4:34
them back into dashboard all you have to
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do is start dragging them hit the
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dashboard key and bring them back in and
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once your all your widgets are back into
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your dashboard you need those in there
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because otherwise they'll stay in there
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when you disable it you're going to type
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the exact same thing as you did before
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so defaults WRC com. apple.
4:55
dasboard and then Dev mode if I can
4:59
spell
5:00
and then all you have to do is change it
5:01
from yes to no enter kill all Doc and
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you'll be on your
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way and now when you go back into
5:10
dashboard try as hard as you can you're
5:13
not going to be able to bring those
5:15
widgets on your desktop so that's pretty
5:17
easy uh a good way to Simply get widgets
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on your desktop and it becomes a lot
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more useful that way in my opinion and
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that's what all there is to it so I hope
5:28
you found this video useful and thank
5:29
you for watch
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