After keeping it alive for a long time, Apple finally killed the Dashboard feature in macOS Catalina. Over the years, Dashboard had become a skeleton of its original self, but some Mac users still used this feature daily. And while we cannot enable the Dashboard in macOS Catalina, there are several third-party apps that you can use to get the same features. In this article, we are going to show the best macOS Dashboard alternatives that you can use to fill the void that Apple has created by killing it.
I spent days to figure out a way to enable Dashboard features in macOS Catalina. But sadly, it cannot be done. There’s no hidden feature or setting or hack that will allow you to do it. Thankfully, there are third-party apps that you can use to enable most Dashboard Features in Catalina. You can click on the table of content below to check the list of apps mentioned in this list. With that said, let’s get to our list, shall we?
- Widgets
- Use the Today View
- Infinity Dashboard
- iWall-Dynamic Desktop Engine
- Dashful
1. Widgets
The closest replacement to the macOS Dashboard that I could find is the Widgets app. There are several things that I like about this app. First and foremost is the fact that it has the largest collection of widgets of all the apps that I tested. With this app, you are getting widgets for an audio player, calendar, calculator, clock, contacts, counter, dictionary, and weather among several others.
Another thing that impressed me was the inclusion of multiple themes. So, not only you can see widgets in traditional black and white themes but also in other colors.
While Apple killed Dashboard with macOS Catalina, it also introduced a kind of replacement for it by launching the Today View area (access by swiping left to right from the right edge of Mac trackpad). The Today View is the same as its iOS counterpart, which means you can place widgets there. The benefits of the Today View area is that apart from showing you the stock widgets, it also gives you an option to showcase third-party widgets.
Not only that, but Infinity Dashboard also supports user-generated modules, allowing you to do monitor things like cryptocurrency pricing, percentage lived, and workday percentage, among other things. You can also create your modules using Javascript. The data is refreshed automatically at a defined frequency which makes it a live dashboard. Finally, there’s a native Mac app along with the ability to share a web app version of your dashboard.
iWall is less like the Mac Dashboard and more like Rainmeter skins for Windows. For the unfamiliar, Rainmeter allows you to create a dynamic desktop background using different themes, wallpapers, and widgets. You can create some cool stuff using Rainmeter on Windows (you can click on the linked article above to check them out). While iWall is not that powerful, it is good enough to act as a Dashboard replacement.
Download from Mac App Store: $2.99
Dashful is a beautiful dashboard replacement if you can live with a web dashboard. The app doesn’t offer any native Mac app, so you will have to access it using a browser. That flaw aside, it is a very powerful dashboard replacement. There is one caveat though. The widgets here are not meant to be interactive like macOS Dashboard. They are more like information widgets.
Use These Mac Dashboard Replacements to Get All the Widgets
The Mac Dashboard was not a popular feature, with only a small percentage of Mac users using it. But that doesn’t negate the fact that it was a good feature, and people who used it loved it.
