Apple will permanently delete Dashboard in macOS Catalina

Apple's dashboard is being phased out of the company's next update on macOS Catalina, as noted first. Appleosophie and later reported by MacRumeurs. The dashboard was launched for the first time 14 years ago with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in 2005 and was last updated in 2011 with the release of OS X 10.7 Lion.

The app first introduced the concept of widgets into Apple's desktop operating system and has become the hallmark of OS X design for more than a decade. In particular, Dashboard became well known for its Sticky Note feature on the desktop and its overall approach to skeuomorphic, underlined by clocks, actions and calculator widgets, a design philosophy that is the foundation of the first version iOS launched a few years after the operating system. X Tiger. It was only until iOS 7 in 2013 that Apple abandoned this aesthetic for a flatter and more modern aesthetic, which was finally taken over by its office approach.

Since 2011, Dashboard has been available in various forms, but none of its widgets or user interface has been updated, which makes it a bit of an anachronism in the backstage of macOS. With OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Apple disabled the default application, while allowing users to access it as a keyboard shortcut or in its own separate space in Mission Control.

Now, in macOS Catalina, it seems that Dashboard is moving away for good. Appleosophie tried to disable and enable the dashboard via a terminal only for the system to indicate as missing, even after a forced restart. The dashboard overlay also shows the Dashboard application icon as a question mark, as with broken iTunes and killed.

That said, it is unlikely that Mac users will use Dashboard significantly. Apple has been offering for many years many of the same widgets in the macOS notification center, accessible via the icon located in the upper right corner of the screen, as well as through a keyboard shortcut or from a touch pad on Apple laptops. There is also an App Store section for Notification Center widgets in case you want to customize one for a particular application such as AirMail, Fantastical or Todoist.

But in terms of software history, the dashboard is a memorable feature that distinguishes OS X in the truly ascendant and transformative years of post-iPod Apple. This will be missed, if only to remind us how much office software development has evolved over the last 15 years.