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How to Disable Dashboard in OS X Snow Leopard

7 July 2010 18,212 views 6 Comments


If you have an older Mac or portable, a silent thief could be hoarding resources and draining your battery without your knowledge — Dashboard. Introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, this feature was heralded as something of revolution and even Microsoft fielded their own version in Windows 7, which Redmond unashamedly named “Gadgets.”

Whether you’re trying to squeeze more performance out of an older Mac or every drop of power from your MacBook, the Dashboard could draining valuable clock cycles and watts behind your back. Here’s how to turn it off.

To turn Dashboard off:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

To turn Dashboard on:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO

Lastly, restart the Dock to effect the change (either process)

killall Dock

For the command-line averse, there is the Disable & Enable Dashboard Utility, which makes the process as simple as clicking a button. Get your copy here.

via Mac OS X Hints

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6 Comments »

  • How to: Turn off Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.6 | FairerPlatform said:

    [...] if you like these Spotlight killers, then our How to OS X Snow Leopard Disable Dashboard is probably right up your alley, [...]

    # 29 March 2011 at 12:03 am
  • 'staar said:

    Thanks for this. I’m not bothered about performance, I just HATE dashboard! Thanks for showing me how to kneecap it. ;)

    # 8 June 2011 at 4:38 pm
  • Kevin said:

    Thanks, It really work for me :) ! Tested on snow leopard 10.6.8

    # 4 July 2011 at 5:57 am
  • Top 10 Mac OS X Dashboard widgets | FairerPlatform said:

    [...] See also: How to disable Dashboard in OS X Snow Leopard [...]

    # 4 July 2011 at 11:29 pm
  • madprofet said:

    Thank you for this! I warried that my Tinkertool took off the Dashboard permanently. Now it works again. Thanks

    # 28 August 2011 at 2:00 pm
  • How To: Disable Dashboard in OS X Mountain Lion - FairerPlatform said:

    [...] Those running OS X Snow Leopard, try this method instead. [...]

    # 31 December 2012 at 12:44 am

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