Repeat as necessary to add more widgets to the OS X desktop.Click and hold on any widget, then while continuing to hold the widget hit F4 again.Typically that is the F4 key, but if it was changed use the new keyboard shortcut instead: Now to get any widget out of dashboard and instead to stick on the desktop, you will want to use the Dashboard keyboard shortcut. Once developer mode has been turned on and dashboard as a space has been turned off, you’re ready to move widgets to the desktop. Go to the Apple menu again and choose “Log Out”, then log back in again for changes to take effect.

Uncheck “Show Dashboard as a space” to make widgets float over the desktop again.Next, pull down the  Apple menu and choose System Preferences, then choose the “Mission Control” panel.Open Terminal and enter the following defaults command, placing Dashboard into Developer Mode:ĭefaults write devmode YES.To get individual Dashboard widgets onto the desktop, you will need to first enable Dashboard developer mode:

Here’s how it works: Enabling Dashboard Developer Mode on Mac OS This is a multi step sequence, first you must enable developer mode for Dashboard then you must get the widgets onto the desktop. How to Get Dashboard Widgets on the Mac Desktop Longtime Mac users may be familiar with this trick, but it still works in the most recent versions of Mac OS X and in many ways is more useful now that Dashboard has been deemphasized in Lion and Mountain Lion and later versions.

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