Dashboard is OS X 10.4 ’s unexampled “ always quick ” utility applications programme . When you strike F12 , Dashboard springs frontwards , dimming the background , quick to provide you a riches of information on everything from airline escape to currency transition to stock prices — and much , much more if you install some of the C ofthird - party Widgetsthat are already available .
But all of this tycoon comes at something of a price — mainly increase random access memory expenditure from open doohickey , even if Dashboard itself is closed . wait at the screenshot below and pay tending to the Real Memory column . That figure represents how much factual RAM each whatchamacallit is using — even though Dashboard itself was n’t open when this image was captured . If you have a Mac with limited RAM , you may bid to disable Dashboard to deny yourself the enticement of these oh - so - ready to hand Widgets . ( Even if you do n’t disable Dashboard , you should try not to leave fate of Widgets open if you ’re working on a tup - constrained Mac ) .
There may be other reasons you ’d rather not have Dashboard available . For instance , if you run a research laboratory of Macs in a school , you may not want the students wasting all their employment clip on the Asteroids picture game gismo or watching the ( I am not making this up ) Goblet of Fire movie sacking date countdown gismo . If you ’d like to invalid Dashboard , for either RAM usage or other reasons , here ’s how to do it . It want a trip to the Terminal , in /Applications / public-service corporation , but it ’s not too hard to do .
Open Terminal , and then type this bidding , followed by the Return headstone :
This tells the system that you no longer bid to have Dashboard available . However , the Dashboard task is really “ possess ” by the Dock , so to make your changes take effect , you demand to restart the Dock . The easiest way to do that is to type this control into the Terminal ( and adjure Return when done ):
After the Dock restarts , hit F12 and you ’ll see … nothing at all . If you go Activity Monitor , you also wo n’t discover any Dashboard widgets in the inclination of task , even if you had several surface when you launch the above command . Dashboard has been eliminated from your organization , and wo n’t return until you tell it to do so . you’re able to do just that by opening Terminal again , and typecast this command :
Once again , you ’ll have to use the
