Terminal Tips: Disable Dashboard

i deleted the app altogether, but now i kinda want it back. is there anyplace to download it? again?

I've removed dashboard. Not because I am a "power user" or to "tweak" but because it has got to be the lamest idea Apple has ever come up with and I've wanted to kill the damn thing since the day they added it.

Is anybody SUCH a poweruser that dashboard is a barrier to their productivity? Genuine question. Or is this just tweaking for tweaking's sake?

Just use Activity Monitor to kill the Dock process (don't worry, it will immediately restart itself) -- it also kills all widgets and the Dashboard. Combined with disabling the hotkey and the only way the Dashboard will launch is if you choose to run it.

Now I'm still waiting for that Terminal command that kills the Dock itself, for once and for all.

Dashboard does run in the background, sure... But not if you never launch it in the first place. Try it: restart your computer, or type killall Dock in Terminal. Then use your computer for a while, and activate Dashboard. It'll be very clear that none of your widgets were running.

The only reason I can see for this trick is if you have one of the new keyboards that have a dedicated Dashboard key, and you often hit it accidentally.

Oops, sorry for the doublepost. It looked like my comment didn't get posted.

A better approach:

Use the widget DashQuit. It quits the Dashboard, but if you hit F12 it starts again. This way you have all the advantages, it is inactive when not in use, and easily accessible when you need it.

Joshua, you're wrong, Dashboard does consume CPU cycles while in the background. There were some notorious cases of poorly written widgets consuming excessive CPU cycles even while in the background. I recall one example of a weather widget that went berserk downloading weather maps repeatedly, consuming massive amounts of net bandwidth and CPU. That's why people came up with stuff like DashQuit in the first place.

That won't actually disable Dashboard, it's still running in the background.

As Gordon remarked, you can just drag the icon out of the dock. But Dashboard is still running in the background, consuming RAM and CPU cycles.

Fortunately there is a solution. There are Dashboard widgets like "DashQuit" that will terminate all Dashboard processes, and quit Dashboard itself.