Apple Removes Dashboard In macOS Catalina

Apple is quietly removing a prominent Mac feature from macOS Catalina when it arrives, according to a report.

Apple is believed to be doing away with Dashboard, removing it from the upcoming macOS update without any announcement. Dashboard is known for the many useful widgets that include a calculator, a clock, sticky notes, a weather interface, and a lot more. The change was reported by MacRumors, but first spotted by Appleosophy.

Gone?

Appleosophy said that after going through the macOS Catalina developer beta Apple released at WWDC, it found that Dashboard was removed from the new macOS based on two things:

First, it said that it tried to enable and disable Dashboard using Terminal. While the action usually results in an inactive Dashboard in earlier macOS versions, the site’s attempts to force start the feature in the macOS Catalina beta resulted in nothing.

“The dashboard is still missing,” the site said, “and did not return after this forced reboot.”

Second, the site also noted the absence of Dashboard in the applications view. Instead of showing the Dashboard icon, macOS Catalina only showed a question mark for Dashboard, just like it did for iTunes.

A useful feature

Apple first introduced Dashboard to Mac users with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in 2005. Its widgets gave users the convenience of being able to do many things, like check flight statuses, without having to open a website or an app. It was also home to many widgets that were too small to be downloaded as a standalone app.

Apple continued to update Dashboard until its final update in 2011 with the launch of OS X 10.7 Lion. It was then disabled by default in macOS 10.10 Yosemite, and continued to be disabled by default in macOS Mojave until Mac users search for the feature and enable it by adding it to the Dock or making it a part of Mission Control.

Although Dashboard and its widgets were useful for some, it can’t be considered a fan-favorite as it wasn’t a favorite feature for most Mac users. Nonetheless, Dashboard will be remembered for the functional design it introduced to OS X.