Apple taketh, and Apple giveth away. While the just-unveiled macOS Catalina includes a number of new improvements to Apple's Mac platform, including a merged Find My app that locates iDevices even when they're offline, one beloved feature is now past its prime and is due to shut down shortly.
That's Dashboard, once of the most impressive things on a Mac. In its heyday, users frequented this space for quick access to widgets such as calculators, weather, clocks, and more. But now few use it, still. Which explains why Apple has decided to let it go completely. In macOS Catalina, Dashboard is nowhere to be found at all.
Dashboard Not In macOS Catalina
Appleosophy first made note of the change. To make sure Dashboard wasn't just hidden away somewhere, the publication even went as far to try and enable the feature via Terminal, but no dice. What's more, there's now a question mark over the Dashboard icon within Launchpad, indicating that the actual app is truly gone.
Dashboard originally came as part of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and at the time Apple said it was a way to quickly access basic information through widgets. The removal should perhaps come as no surprise. In macOS 10.10 Yosemite, Apple disabled Dashboard by default. Then, in last year's release of macOS 10.14 Mojave, the feature was much harder to access, having been hidden under Mission Control.
A New Dashboard?
9to5Mac notes that this might not be the last time Apple fans will see Dashboard. It's possible Apple is cooking a sequel, and could add it to macOS Catalina during the operating system's beta testing period. Still, there's no guarantee of this actually happening, so it's best to just accept Dashboard is gone and move on.
It's hard to imagine this is a huge loss for users, though. After all, most features on Dashboard can now be accessed via the Today tab in the Notification Center on the current iteration of macOS. Here, users can add widgets for various applications such as Reminders, Calendar, Weather, Stocks, and many others. It's also integrated with third-party applications.
Features go away all the time, and Apple is known for making bold choices when it comes to removing stuff. It did, after all, remove the headphone jack on the iPhone 7, causing widespread outrage. No iPhone has shipped with a headphone jack ever since.
Are you still a fan of Dashboard and feel gutted by this change? If you have any thoughts, feel free to sound them off in the comments section below!
