The Mac’s Dashboard is a great idea: a separate work area where you can store mini-applications called widgets that can do all sorts of wonderful things, from telling you the current weather, news and stock prices through to giving you calculators, translation tools and games.
On the whole, it’s nice to have those widgets hidden away on the Dashboard. You can bring them up instantly with F12 (F4 on newer keyboards), and dismiss them all just as easily.
Press the button with the + at the bottom left of the Dashboard screen. A selection of other widgets will appear from the bottom of the screen. These are widgets you can pick from and add by default. In the Stickies app on your Mac, choose File New Note. To add a picture or PDF, drag a file to your note. Your content is saved automatically. The first line of the note is shown in the title bar when you collapse the note. To customize your note, do any of the following: Change the note color: Choose a color from the Color menu.
However, sometimes it’s useful to have a widget on your desktop, where you can keep an eye on it. Examples include calculators, clocks, and anything that you need to look at while you’re working. By default, the Mac doesn’t let you put widgets on the desktop, but there are a couple of ways you can work around this.
I recently bought me a new computer, and now I’m hooking it up to my My Book live. On my old laptop I managed users and shares through the My Book live Dashboard application, the app automatically got installed with first time use of my My book live. On my new laptop I’ve connected the drive and downloaded the WD My cloud app, but I can’t find anywhere to download the My book. In OS X, Finder by default features a number of useful options and buttons in its toolbar, and some apps like Dropbox may install their own handy items. But you can also pin your Mac apps directly to the Finder toolbar itself, which introduces some interesting productivity and workflow-enchancing opportunities. Add New App to Mac Applications Folder Drag your new app to the Applications folder in the sidebar of the Finder window. Select “Move” if prompted to move the application. If you would like to keep a copy of your app in your iCloud Drive, simply copy the app file and paste it back into your iCloud Drive using Cmd+C (copy) and Cmd+V (paste).
Free those widgetsHow Do I Add Widgets To My Mac Dashboard
One trick is to switch Dashboard into developer mode – the mode that widget developers use to create their widgets. To do this, open a Terminal window (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and type (all on one line):
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES && killall Dock
… then press Return. Your dock should disappear and reappear. Now hit F12 (F4 on newer keyboards) to bring up the Dashboard. To drag a widget onto your desktop, start dragging it in the Dashboard, then hit F12/F4 while dragging to dismiss the Dashboard. https://xbvfpmz.weebly.com/blog/class-timetable-app-mac. Now position the widget on your desktop and release the mouse button. Here’s a BBC Radio widget on my desktop:
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To put a widget back on the Dashboard, do the opposite: Start dragging it, hit F12/F4 to bring up the Dashboard, then position it on the Dashboard and let go of the mouse button.
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As you might imagine, you can turn off developer mode at any time with:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode NO && killall Dock
If the idea of messing about on the command line doesn’t appeal, there’s a handy widget called DevMode that lets you flip in and out of developer mode at the click of a button. It even shows you what mode you’re currently in.
A nicer way to do it
While this quick hack works, it’s not without its problems. For one thing, any widget you drag onto your desktop now consumes CPU cycles constantly, even when the Dashboard is hidden. Another problem is that the widget is always on top of other windows, so it gets in the way.
While it’s not possible to do much about the CPU thing, there is a neat app available that solves the “always on top” issue. Daily wall mac app. It’s called Amnesty Singles, it costs $10 and it allows you to convert any Dashboard widget to a standalone app so you can run it on your desktop.
In true Mac style, all you do is drag and drop a .wdgt bundle onto the Amnesty window to turn it into an app:
(In case you’re wondering where your currently-installed widgets live, the system widgets are in /Library/Widgets and your user widgets are in ~/Library/Widgets.)
Once you’ve created and saved your widget app, double-click it to launch. It behaves just like a regular app, with an icon in the Dock and a menu bar that lets you do useful things like set an auto-refresh interval, and control whether the app sits on the desktop, behaves like a regular app window, or floats on top:
An even nicer way to do it
Finally, to really go to town with your widgets, check out Amnesty Widget Browser ($20). This installs itself in the menu bar and lets you instantly add any installed widget to your desktop. It has all the features of Amnesty Singles, plus you can do wacky stuff like scale and rotate widgets and make them see-through:
(Not sure how useful a rotated widget is, but a translucent widget is pretty nice!) The app also comes with a selection of bonus widgets for you to play with, including a nice flip clock and the classic “Snake” game. Ahh, widget heaven.
Best personal budget apps. Speaking of bonuses, here’s a bonus widget tip: You can quickly remove a widget from the Dashboard by hovering the mouse cursor over it, then holding down Option and clicking the close button that appears. Neat!
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The tug of war between Mac OS and Windows seems to be never-ending. But I can sense that the former has garnered more attention from users. Slowly and gradually, people are moving to Mac OS from Windows.
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Though they have to face some teething troubles during the first few weeks, they get along well with the interface and other functionalities. What works for Mac OS is that once a user uses it for six months or a year, he would never come back to Windows or any other operating system.
I had experienced this feeling of awesomeness when I switched from Android to iOS. But all said and done, the desktop of Windows PC has always ruled the roost. Some of the desktop functionalities can’t be found in Mac OS, and this could be the possible reason why Windows fans stick to their ‘beloved’ operating system.
If one thing I have to appreciate about Windows is its ability to create shortcuts for applications. Users who have recently moved from Windows computer to a Mac, you must have faced this issue of placing icon shortcuts of your favorite apps.
But the good news is that Mac users can also place shortcut icons of apps they use regularly. Want to know how? Read on…
How to place app shortcut icons on your Mac desktop
First off, launch a Finder window on your Mac.
Click on Applications from the left side navigation.
Now select the app you want to create a shortcut for.
Drag the app and drop it on the desktop.
Hurray!! The shortcut icon is now created. You can follow this action to create shortcut icons for other apps as well.
Jignesh Padhiyar is the co-founder of iGeeksBlog.com who has a keen eye for news, rumors and all the unusual stuff that happens around Apple products. During his tight schedule, Jignesh finds some moments of respite to share side-splitting contents on social media.
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