Apple Confirms Dashboard is Going Away After 14 Years - MacRumorsOpen MenuShow RoundupsShow Forums menuVisit ForumsOpen Sidebar
Skip to Content

Apple Confirms Dashboard is Going Away After 14 Years

Apple has removed Dashboard support from WebKit, not long after it was discovered that the feature has been completely dropped in macOS Catalina, according to a changelog spotted by Japanese blog Mac Otakara.

goodbye dashboard
While this news is not entirely surprising, it eliminates any slim hope that Dashboard might have returned in a future beta of macOS Catalina. The feature has already been disabled by default since OS X Yosemite, but it can still be manually enabled within Mission Control in System Preferences as of macOS Mojave.

Dashboard, first introduced in OS X Tiger in 2005, was effectively a secondary desktop on the Mac that housed a variety of customizable widgets, ranging from sticky notes and the weather forecast to a clock and a calculator. These widgets have relied on Safari's open source WebKit engine for rendering.

Dashboard appears to remain functional in macOS Mojave for now, although it is clearly a legacy feature and some widgets do not work. After over 14 years, the feature is about to ride off into the sunset for good.

Related Forum: macOS Catalina

Popular Stories

iPhone 18 Pro Deep Red Feature

iPhone 18 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 12 New Features

Wednesday March 18, 2026 7:39 am PDT by
While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are not expected to launch for another six months or so, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. It was initially reported that the iPhone 18 Pro models would have fully under-screen Face ID, with only a front camera visible in the top-left corner of the screen. However, the latest rumors indicate that only one Face ID component...
ios 26 4 yellow

Here Are Apple's Release Notes for iOS 26.4

Wednesday March 18, 2026 11:56 am PDT by
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate versions of iOS 26.4 and iPadOS 26.4, which means we're going to see a public launch as soon as next week. The RC versions of the software include Apple's official release notes, giving us final details on what's included in the update. Apple Music - Playlist Playground (beta) generates a playlist from your...
Apple Logo Sketch Feature

Apple Has Now Unveiled Eight New Products This Month

Tuesday March 17, 2026 9:25 am PDT by
Apple has unveiled a whopping eight new products so far this March, including an iPhone 17e, iPad Air models with the M4 chip, MacBook Air models with the M5 chip, MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, the all-new MacBook Neo, an updated Studio Display, a higher-end Studio Display XDR, and now the AirPods Max 2 this week. iPhone 17e features the same overall design as the iPhone...

Top Rated Comments

macpro2000 Avatar
88 months ago
It’s a useful resource. I still use it all the time.
Score: 59 Votes (Like | Disagree)
88 months ago
Honestly I forgot it was even still there.
Score: 54 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AngerDanger Avatar
88 months ago
Steve demoing Dashboard for the first time in 2005.

It's kind of odd to think that it was a precursor to Steve's iPhone vision. Originally, he intended for the iPhone to run web-apps rather than have an App Store, and Dashboard was a collection of glossy, skeuomorphic, web-apps with rounded rectangular icons and charming-but-cheesy animations.

Two years before we had this:



We had this:



Attachment Image

Attachment Image
Score: 45 Votes (Like | Disagree)
88 months ago
Deleted.
Score: 42 Votes (Like | Disagree)
88 months ago
Now just waiting to get rid go Launchpad
Score: 33 Votes (Like | Disagree)
88 months ago
Very sad! I use it multiple times a day to quickly check on stocks, weathers, packages at a click of a side button on my mouse to have it slide in as an overlay and back out in seconds. Will be something that may make me hold back updating along with the quick editing features of QuickTime 7.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Related Apple News: Local News | Politics | Lifestyle | Culture | Business