Apple has again disabled Dashboard by default in OS X El Capitan. Here’s how to enable it and get it back the way it was before.
Dashboard in OS X wasn’t the most popular feature of Apple’s operating system, and the company is focusing less on it with each new OS X release, but still, many users take advantage of it. Apple first started disabling the Dashboard by default in OS X Yosemite and hasn’t even updated the feature for several years.
If you’re not familiar with the OS X Clipboard, it’s essentially a second type of desktop on your Mac that can house all sorts of different widgets like calendar, weather, calculator, stocks, and more. However, since the introduction of Notification Center in OS X, there has been less and less use for the Clipboard.
It can still serve its purposes, so you may want to have it enabled. In OS X El Capitan, Apple has disabled it and users have to enable it manually to get it working again.
The good news is that it’s not that hard to enable and it’s only one setting you flip in System Preferences.
Here’s how to enable the Dashboard in OS X El Capitan.
Enabling the OS X El Capitan Dashboard
Again, the new Notification Center in OS X was meant to replace the Dashboard, but if you’re like me and don’t really use the Notification Center in OS X, the Dashboard is a great alternative. Fortunately, Apple continued to keep Dashboard in OS X, but disabled it.
All it takes is a quick flip of a setting to re-enable the Dashboard.
Just go to where it says, click the dropdown menu and select .
This will give you back the Dashboard and you can access it by pressing the Dashboard key on your MacBook keyboard or Apple keyboard (F3). From there, you can select it at the top to bring it up.
The Clipboard are pretty classic features that were first introduced in OS X Tiger back in 2005, and it’s easy to see that Apple hasn’t bothered to update it for a while, as the widgets still have the older bubbly design of older OS X versions. .
In any case, when you open the Dashboard, you can customize it to add and remove widgets, respectively, by clicking the + and – icons in the lower left corner. There are a handful of different widgets to choose from, including weather, flight information, sports scores, and even ski reports if that’s convenient for you.
OS X El Capitan was recently released, and although it has the same overall design and looks (mostly) the same as OS X Yosemite, it comes with a handful of cool new features.
For example, there are improvements to Spotlight Search, transit directions in Apple Maps, a revamped Notes app, new swipe gestures you can use in a number of stock Apple apps, and even a new Split View multitasking mode that lets you easily use the two. applications at once.
You could of course do this before, but OS X now makes it easier to dock windows to the edges of the screen to create a true split screen mode, whereas you would have to do it manually and even then it was a pain in the backend.
If you haven’t updated to OS X El Capitan yet, it’s a worthwhile upgrade that most users will need to upgrade at some point, and it’s the only reason to stop being your favorite apps that don’t support the new version yet.
