How to completely disable Dashboard
Dashboard is the kind of thing you either love or hate, using it constantly or not at all. As you may recall, a few days ago we discussed how unused Dashboard widgets can take up a lot of memory and slow your systems performance, we also showed you how to reclaim that memory. For those that don’t use Dashboard at all, we’ll show you how to disable Dashboard completely (but don’t worry it is just as easy to enable it again).
Turning Dashboard off and on is done easily through the Terminal, so your first step is to launch the Terminal. Then follow these simple steps:
Disable Dashboard- type or paste the following exactly into the Terminal window:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
Next, kill the currently running Dashboard by killing the Dock (the Dock will reload itself, don’t worry):
killall Dock
That’s it, now Dashboard is completely disabled. Hit F12 and nothing will happen. So what if you had a change of heart and want Dashboard back? Well turning it back on is just as easy.
Enabling Dashboard- type or paste the following exactly into the Terminal window:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO
Again, kill the Dock, which will reload the now activated Dashboard:
killall Dock
That’s all there is to it! If you don’t want to disable Dashboard completely, but want to regain some of the lost memory that is being hogged by open Widgets, check out this article: Free up System Memory by killing Dashboard widgets
Mmm, works very well. Good tip, thanks.
Hey, I know it’s not exactly on the same topic but did you know that Dashboard is managing a cache folder? It is possible to speed it up by wiping its cache.
Take a look to this tip at macosxhints:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20061002101155933&query=dashboard
I like Dashboard too much to disable it but I could see how this would be useful
Is there a way to kill the annoying preview that Leopard uses to constantly update items in the Dock? I don’t need it, don’t want it, and I know it comes at a price (memory). I’d be okay without all the flipbook fanciness in the folder previews as well.
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This worked quite fine, thanks! On normal use I like Dashboard, but I have created a separate user for games only. Under that gamer account on my Mac I have put the eye candy to the least, set background 50% gray, disabled all unnecessary tools&toys – and now disabled the Dashboard, too.
Of course I could just buy some extra memory, but this is cheaper (=for free, as in beer)
Thanks! I never really used dashboard.
Thanks, this is the third time I’ve used this page – one for each upgrade of OSX! Cheers!
Thanks SO much! I’ve always hated Dashboard, and have been waiting for Apple to get rid of it. It was always popping up when I didn’t want it, while I was editing or otherwise doing something useful. Now it’s gone! YES!
Finally got rid of this rubbish! I hate useless crap on laptop.